Odd Lots - This Is How Chinese Manufacturers Are Countering Trump's Trade War

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

President Trump has announced tariffs on basically every trading partner. However there is a real sense that the ultimate goal is to hamper the growing perceived economic threat from China. One vision, for how the trade war could be "won" in some sense is by isolating China from the rest of the world. But that's not happening. And in fact, if anything, China is deepening its relationship with other trading nations, particularly in Asia right now. On this episode we speak with Cameron Johnson, a partner at the consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions. Cameron is based in Shanghai, and has an on-the-ground perspective on the state of Chinese manufacturing, having worked alongside producers and end buyers. He talks about the scale of Chinese manufacturing dominance, what Chinese firms are doing to counteract the tariffs, and he argues that in artificial intelligence, China is already way ahead in many respects. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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At UPS.com Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Halloway. Tracy, I don't know this for sure. But I kind of have this feeling that there's a bit of a fantasy, perhaps on the part of Americans or the administration or so forth, that in this trade war, that non-China Asian countries, they could be our partner. They could be our

big trading partner and that somehow China could be isolated from them. Maybe. I mean, I know there's a lot of concern about Chinese goods basically flowing over the border into places like Vietnam. So I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that. You know, one thing I find really funny and my definition of fun might differ to a lot of other people's. But you know, if you look at the real exchange rate. Yeah. So currency adjusted for inflation and stuff like that. The real effective exchange rate for the dollar is up like 20% since January. and the real effective rate for the U.N., the Chinese U.N., is down 14%. So if you're trying to, like, make your own goods competitive, American goods competitive, it feels like we're heading in the opposite direction. Wait, isn't that really true? Yeah. Even with the nominal, the massive nominal decline in the U.S. dollar against all these currencies

that on a real basis, it's actually up massively. According to Bank of America. Huh. That's pretty crazy. I would not have, I certainly would not have guessed that. And also, this sort of gets back to the point that, like, with the tariffs and with the trade war, I still don't know what the goal is. And it changes a lot. I don't know the degree to which any of it was successful. But under the Biden administration, I had some sense of, okay, we had this specific goal with trade policy and other tech transfer policies to be at or near or ahead of the frontier of cutting edge in a certain key areas. And when it comes to trade policy under this administration, it strikes me as all over the map.

Yeah. So there's the question, obviously, of whether the U.S. needs to be manufacturing things like toys in America, whether people would be interested in taking those manufacturing jobs. And then finally, as you pointed out, the goals are so confusing. Because on the one hand, it seems like, all right, it's about bringing manufacturing back to the states. But on the other hand, the Trump administration has said that it's a way of raising revenue as well. And then you have Trump saying, I'm going to strike all these deals. So deals are seen as a win for him as well. But then if he needs to raise revenue, is he actually going to strike deals? Totally. Well, anyway, there's a million questions, and we will have hundreds of more episodes in our lifetime, probably that revolve around this topic. But I think it's a good time to get some perspective from the perspective of the Chinese business community, Chinese manufacturing, and so forth, Chinese policy, et cetera. And, like, how a lot of this is being perceived from the Chinese perspective. and the response to the aggressive action.

Yeah, because U.S. policy isn't happening in a vacuum, right? Like, China is reacting to it. And, you know, sometimes China can move pretty fast. So we should talk about it. Totally. Well, I'm very excited to say, I think we do have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking with Cameron Johnson. He is a senior partner at Title Wave Solutions.

He's based in Shanghai, but he's temporarily here in the U.S. visiting us. Someone who has his finger on the pulse of Chinese business and manufacturing. Cameron, thank you so much for coming on Lodlots. Thanks for having me, guys. It's great to be here in New York with you. What's a tightway of solutions? What do you do? So it's a boutique firm focused on supply chain manufacturing, advising consulting.

Think if you're a business that needs a supply chain map and a risk assessment, maybe you need some operational efficiencies. Maybe you need to understand the policy roadmap for the next five years that the various governments around the world are doing. Those are some of the things that we focus on. Given recent events, how busy have you actually been? You know, interestingly enough in April, business was quite slow because it It started off that we thought it was going to be kind of a normal.

Q1 was okay. April was kind of starting off to be a normal year. But then when the tariffs came in, everything stopped. And so essentially in China, what you had is you had a couple weeks where almost nothing moved in the supply chains. Walmart came out eventually and said, let's get some stuff moving and that kind of unclogged things. But April was really tough. And then after Geneva, it's kind of the fire hose came on. And everything and everybody was, how do we move products around?

How do we move production around? How do we get talent in different areas that we need to get it into? So it's actually been quite a rampage since then. So we're recording this on July 16th, and I have to admit, I don't know what the tariff rate is on China these days. I don't know where things stand in terms of what the latest deadline is. I've sort of lost track of it all, like many people in the market, a lot of this has suddenly become noise. But I can ask on July 16th, from what's been announced so far, whether it's tariffs or various other actions, is the state of business in China meaningfully different than it? it was prior to April 2nd, or would you say mostly things are kind of the same and adjusting

to different tariff rates? Had there been some major shift in flows or supply chain? No, there hasn't been. What you do see, though, is a lot of moving around to pieces and parts, you know, toys, furniture, these kinds of things. If they were made in China before, they're definitely not now. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're pulling your factories out. One of the things we have seen is that a lot of companies now are upskilling, right? They're going to put the higher margin and higher level products in China. They'll put the lower products outside of China. Think of Vietnam versus China. China can make any SKU you want known demand, essentially. Vietnam can't make that many. So when you actually look at the trade flows,

Vietnam produces far fewer SKUs and ships them to the states. China ships it to the rest of the world. Wait, talk more about shifting, I guess, lower quality production into other areas because, again, a lot of people when they think of China will still think of basic good manufacturing, right, when in fact, I think it's progressed quite a lot since then. It has. And often, you know, when you look at kind of the last 10 years to a short history, when the first trade war came out, a lot of companies wanted to do China plus one plus two, right? You have a primary manufacturer in China. Then you have, you know, a sister factory maybe in Southeast Asia, Latin America, that kind of thing. What has happened now is that those factories

now outside of China are also being upskilled, but they're also being more specialized. In China, you can still upskill. And because of the local ecosystems that offer you far more advantage than anywhere else in the world, particularly for certain products, you'll still keep that and eat the margin within the tariffs. But in other places, it gives you more flexibility. So now if you're in Vietnam, for example, sure, you might have a 20% tariff from the states, but when you compare with China, you're still getting that margin, and you'll be okay. The reality is when you actually look at what's happening overall in the tariff schedules, it's a mess. Nobody knows what's going on. And in fact, we're hearing now that some companies

is actually are reshoring manufacturing back to China. Because when you actually look at how the tariffs are working 20%, then supposedly 40% on the trans shipment, at 20% certain goods are more competitive made in China, even with eating the tariffs. And essentially it would go something like, Joe, you're making a certain type of cup. Maybe it's a Christmas branded cup, right?

So you need a little bit more specialized machinery, people, talent. Okay, it's 50% from China, 20% from Vietnam. It's difficult maybe to get in Vietnam because they're not as specialized. So here's Joe, you as the manufacturer, you're going to go to the packaging supplier who gives you your cardboard and plastic. You're going to go to your raw material supplier. You're going to go to this or that. And you're all going to ask them to take two or three points off their sales to you.

And all of a sudden, that 55% or 50% automatically becomes 20%. So that's how company is in the granular, are starting to work around some of these challenges. Well, if I did have a Christmas cup that I wanted to design right now, Now, how quickly could I have a manufactured product that then could ship? No, I'm serious. Do you know there's a whole, like, Christmas town in China that specializes in Christmas goods? Oh, that sounds familiar.

Could I have a cup by this Christmas season? You could have any cup of any design of any material in on demand. How quickly? Well, it depends on the design. It depends how many parts of the process you need. Sure. If you already have the design, you have the cat and everything, you're looking at probably two months. Oh. Maybe less.

If it's at scale, for example, you want to show. of every Starbucks in the country, then, of course, it would be much longer. But if you're looking just for specialized runs, maybe you're a company where you want a Christmas giveaways for your staff. Maybe it's a couple hundred, a couple thousand. That you can do very quickly. This is something that actually came up in a previous episode with Sarah Lafleur, where we were talking about apparel, but I think it applies more broadly.

But she emphasized the importance of basically just China's expertise in doing this and the supply network that it's actually built up. So if you are a foreign investor or a U.S. company or whatever and you go to China, like immediately people kind of know what to do now if you're asking for a factory. So I'm curious, is that replicable in a reasonable amount of time by places like Vietnam? It is, and you are seeing it being replicated overall. I argue that supply chains aren't relocating, but they're expanding and replicating. So essentially, again, if you're a cut producer in China, now you're going to make it in Vietnam or Thailand,

And so you have this now mini ecosystem. You go to your different suppliers in China and say, hey, I need this product next to me in Ho Chi men. You need to figure out how to get me that. Oh, this packaging guy, okay, you have a sister company maybe in Hanoi. Okay, now I need to figure out how to access that. So you're seeing the replication of supply chains around the region. For example, I look at supply chain ecosystems and five key components. The first is advanced infrastructure.

It's not just ports and railroads. It's also things like 5G, the electrical grid, sewers. Second is talent and educational apparatus. where are you going to get the workers from, but also as things evolve, for example, AI, how are you going to train them up into these new areas? The third is government support, which is kind of obvious. The fourth is raw material access and or the ability to process it. We actually look at what China does.

It doesn't have a lot of raw materials, but it has expertise in the processing. And the fifth is technology. Now, China has this in most industries across the board. The U.S. has it, for example, an aerospace, Europe does too. But just in terms of, so that's how I evaluate a supply chain ecosystem. So when I work with customers or even policymakers and they say, well, what about Vietnam? I look at it in context of those five key areas because that will tell me where the gaps are and where we need to actually improve. Talk about that process.

I mean, if Vietnam had the talent to be China, it would be China or it would be at that scale. So obviously there's a gap. But this is something that's come up before. All right, let's say there's a Chinese company that makes X or Y. Let's say they're making sporting goods or something like that. They want to have more production of the low end in Vietnam, but presumably there is still some deficiency of some of these five categories, including infrastructure, including access to raw materials. What is their process for making it such that, given the gap between China and Vietnam, that that manufacturing in Vietnam does become economical? Well, part of it is, again, just the lower SKU level, right?

So if you look at how hockey sticks, for example, are produced, there's five levels of hockey stick. The best to the worst, and you have five different levels. And so in that regard, you'll send a couple, you know, probably level five and four, maybe four and three to Vietnam to be produced. It sounds like you've had a hockey stick client. I've had multiple clients. Okay. But, you know, ultimately you look at where you can get the largest amount of volume, not just at the cheap, not at the cheapest prices, but at the least amount of problems. Right.

If you're selling, let's say, a level five hockey stick where, you know, it's not NHL grade, the cost is going to be lower and the tariffs actually hit more and bite more. If you're making NHL grade hockey sticks, which they do make in China, it doesn't really matter what the tariff is at that point because they are expertise level. You have to have that quality regardless. And so the other thing, Joe, to your point about China versus Vietnam and pretty much China versus the rest of the world, China has about 220 million workers in manufacturing, about 28 percent of its population. population, Vietnam has $15 million, about 30. Yeah. And so the scale is a quality all into itself. And people just really don't understand that the difference is not just trying to

moving forward in technology and in different ways of doing business. All of that is true. But it really is just the massive scale of ability of talent where you can call and say, I need a Christmas cup in three months. And it doesn't matter what the size shape or material is. They'll figure out how to do it. And nobody else in the world can do that. Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard.

To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value and fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real. Lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But on Vanguard. At Vanguard, institutional quality isn't a tagline. It's a commitment to your clients. We're talking top-grade products across the board of over 80 bond funds,

actively managed by a 200-person global squad of sector specialists, analysts, and traders. These folks live and breathe fixed income. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com slash audio. That's vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject to risk vanguard marketing corporation distributor. Think you know UPS? Yeah, that's us.

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is a short five-minute audio report on the day's top stories. Episodes are published throughout the day with the latest information and data to keep you informed. Yes, there are other products like this from a variety of news organizations, but they usually rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day. That's not what we do. We create customized episodes that can only be heard on Bloomberg News Now.

And we don't wait an hour to publish breaking news. When news breaks, we'll have an episode up in your podcast feed within minutes. So you're always getting the latest stories and developments. Get the reporting and the context from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts we're all over the world. Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News Now on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Tracy, it just clicked to me that there's an interesting lesson here that relates to the episode we did on snack food warehouses in the U.S., which is that with technological advance comes the ability to have more skews. So as warehouses in the U.S. got more roboticized, the sheer variety that they could hold at a given time made sense.

Because you can have robots go behind and pick them out and so forth. And so it's interesting to hear about like skew diversity as being this major sort of gap between China versus the rest of the world. I'm smiling because you just reminded me of Pitos from that episode. Pitos, the P-Chitos. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Anyway, I better move on and stop laughing. Because you'll get hungry.

I will. And we don't have those in China, so I don't know what this are. Okay, but on this note, how do labor costs actually fit into this entire process? And can you maybe compare and contrast Vietnam and China right now? So labor costs, again, it really depends on the industry. For example, if you work in certain industries like composites, your labor cost actually is a small component of the overall cost. It really is in the materials, right? Maybe the carbon or glass fibers, the resin systems, the machinery.

So it's not equivalent. What you have to look at really is what's work or productivity and efficiency. Because at that point, the cost really doesn't matter as much, particularly with tariffs, right? The reason for tariffs, ultimately, according to the U.S., is they want to reshore, but they also want to deal with Chinese overcapacity or industrial policy. But the reality is in Asia, labor across the board is not as important as it is, such as I have this ecosystem, I have access to cheaper raw materials. I have plentiful electricity.

One of the challenges in Asia overall is just the stability of electrical grid. And as China continues to build out more and more of its own electrical infrastructure, you're seeing more of this actually play, for example, a certain amount of, I think it's about 20% of Vietnam's electricity ultimately comes from China. And so you're seeing more and more of this spillover. So it's less about what is the cost per worker? Because, for example, in China, particularly with entry-level white collar workers, 10 years ago, you might have 25 to 30,000 R&B per month, which is roughly $4,000 to $5,000.

It would be maybe a first entry-level job. Now that level is half. And part of that is because the economy is challenged. There's more plentiful graduates every year, about $10 million. And at the same time, businesses are just using them for different things than they were in the past. So labor is not, it's a part of the key component, right? It's part of that key, five key areas, the talent. You definitely have to look at it.

But there's a lot of other parts in the picture as well. How do the governments of other Asian nations feel about, you know, there's obviously anxiety in the U.S. about what the rise of Chinese manufacturing, which is an age old story, means, you know, meant that we had the China shock for American manufacturers, etc., to the European ones. Is there similar anxiety among Malaysia, for example? I don't know if they still make the proton saga, the car. But, you know, these countries have their own sort of longtime national champions and so forth. Did they feel anxiety about the growing presence of Chinese power, both as imports, but also just setting up a shop at home? To some degree, there's always a hesitation. But the reality is that the counterbalance to that the United States is not doing anything. Sure.

So, for example, one of the things we've seen particularly in the last couple of months is when you talk about how was China versus the U.S., for example, in Southeast Asia, Chinese leaders are going all around Southeast Asia talking to them about, hey, here's the market opportunities, here's what we're looking at. The U.S. is saying, come to D.C., and then we'll figure out what we're going to do. They're very different. And there is a lot of hesitation. You know, for example, China, you know, my experience, I went to Southeast Asia recently, they're essentially discussing six key areas with these different countries. The first is Chinese firms will continue to do FDI or investments in your countries.

American firms are not. American firms are going to retrench to North America. Think of Apple as a prime example. So that basically takes away a key component of U.S. diplomacy and also, you know, influence. Second is we have legions of young educated workers. They're ready and willing to go other places. They want to work overseas. They want to get that experience. Maybe they have a better job opportunities. The third is we can share technology. And again, what people look like there was an article yesterday about how China is a restricting technology. That's actually not what's happening.

If you want the technology of 2025, you're probably not going to get it. But if you want the technology of 2023, no problem because we're a couple generations ahead. So when you look at what the discussions are in the region, all you need is that, because you're probably at a 2020 or below in terms of technology. You need those couple extra steps to actually fuel your growth. The fourth is there's still a lot of commitment to do infrastructure in region, but it's not going to be a BRI, a Belt and Road kind of thing, but it will be, hey, you need certain ports, we'll work that, we'll build those out. You need, again, maybe electrical grids or railroads, connected Kuhn Ming down down to Singapore. Those are the things that you're going to start to see more and more of,

because, again, they fuel, and countries are like, listen, I have to have economic growth. I have to be able to continually raise the standard of my people. The fifth is there's a lot of discussion, and Foreign Minister Wangi had a discussion recently with the ASEAN countries about doing more trade agreements, free trade agreements with Southeast Asia. And the sixth one, to your point, and this is one in my most recent trip to Southeast Asia, I had never heard this before, and I've been going there since I was a kid. Essentially, there's an understanding that there are local manufacturing or industries that are indigenous to these countries, and the Chinese are acknowledging that we may not,

we're not interested in blowing those up. That's my interpretation. But essentially, that we're going to be sensitive to local concerns. Now, to your point, does that mean that happens in all cases? I don't know. But the reality is that there is an understanding of there's an opportunity here because the U.S. is withdrawing. But at the same time, it's just not good business to make people unhappy when we're doing business. You mentioned going to Washington, and we opened this discussion by talking about how, well, we don't really know what the tariffs are, and I think it's difficult for anyone who's trying to track them now. You mentioned that production is already moving in response to this. Is there any concern that, like, in two months, Trump is just going to reverse

position and the tariffs are going to go away or be altered, and that changes the economic calculation for setting something up in, say, Vietnam? I think there's just a lack of confidence overall the direction we're going. And there's no clarity whatsoever. And you're right. This kind of back and forth, it is, but it isn't. It is, but it isn't. Supply chains take probably 15 to 20 years to fully develop. You may be able to build a factory in a couple, but that, again, that doesn't mean you have the raw materials, the people and the other key components that you need to build out your business. And so, yeah, it's not only uncertain, but all these other countries are going, China's not doing that to us. I'll give an example, Bangladesh, right, population larger than Russia.

They have a zero percent tariff to China. They have a 35 percent. to the U.S. So which one do you think they're going to prefer more? They're obviously going to do more business with China. And ultimately, this is the issue with the tariffs. If the tariff was, listen, this is the standard rate per country. Of course, it fluctuates depending on the market need and so on. We want to have more market access into your own countries for American products.

There's a general understanding that that's probably what could happen. I mean, maybe even not perfect in all cases. But the reality is that the way it currently is, it basically puts the U.S. in a horrible light. and the people who we need the most are the ones who are suffering the most. And how long do we think that's really going to be able to last before they're like, that's enough, we're going to go with the Chinese. What does China import from Bangladesh? Because my impression is that China just does not import that much period, not just from the U.S., but is not a big importer of anything these days, in part because of how much it's been able to build out its domestic capacity and a range of things.

scrap metal, maybe. Yeah, you know, clothes, processed raw materials. And again, China expansion 1.0 was kind of what we had up until 2020, meaning in the country, your world class at most everything you have. Now we're seeing China 2.0, which is China for the world. So it's less about Bangladesh selling to China. It's more about as the Chinese supply chains and supply chains in general continue to evolve, replicate, relocate, now Bangladesh, who wants a piece of that supply chain puzzle,

that's what they want. And remember, one of the things that China's discussing with ASEAN and Southeast Asia is, is market access for your products back into China. So you could have Chinese manufacturers who moved to Bangladesh because maybe it is cheaper or they have better raw material access for India, for cotton, for example, and then they could produce and sell it back into China. So there's a lot of things that can actually happen

across the board of supply chains that we haven't even experienced yet. Do you see anyone maybe shifting focus, Chinese companies shifting focus into selling domestically in the domestic market? Because, of course, that would dovetail with one of the government's key ambitions, which is to try to boost consumption in an economy where saving has been pretty traditional. We do see some shift to that, but domestic demand overall is not fantastic. There's a lot of hangover from the COVID years. Some Western products are still seen as a better option than

Chinese products. And also China historically as a saving nation, the Chinese are never going to buy like the Americans ever. And this is one of the actually debates I have with economists who say they need to buy more, sure. But what does that actually mean? What is the actual rate you have to hit? Because if you expect them to do a U.S. rate, that's never going to happen. So you do see people and companies are still spending on machinery upgrades. They're still buying iPhones and Huawei's and Itoes and Xiaomi cars and everything else, but they're not spending like Americans would spend. And they're saving more than they used to. Again, I would argue a lot of that's from the COVID years, but it also has to do with other challenges inside the country, the social welfare uncertainty,

these kinds of things as the population gets older. Actually, talk about what is the sort of debate that's happening in China with regards to this idea of so-called Chinese overcapacity? Because American economists love to talk about this. Sometimes it feels like cope to me. It's like, oh, we can't compete. Therefore, they must be cheating, right? Therefore, they must be flooding our market because they have this overcapacity.

On the other hand, you do see comments from leaders in Beijing from time to time talking about the provinces engaging in unhelpful, unproductive race to the bottom competition between each province's champion, et cetera. Explain to us like how this question of quote overcapacity is sort of metabolized in China. Well, overcapacity is very much in the eye of the beholder. If you're a consumer, in many cases, you love overcapacity because prices keep going down, right? I think you're right. Part of it is that when you actually look at the buildout of initiatives and like a five-year plan structure, a lot of it is we need to do X, Y, and Z. You know, we need to have more AI data centers. We need to have more EV companies. And so different regional governments or champions will undertake those initiatives. And so that ultimately will contribute to a build out of the overcapacity argument. I think the other thing to realize is that we actually look at how a lot of this is done. It's done in a way to figure out how to build out. an ultimate supply chain, not an end product. Here, we want to make a forward truck. Great.

That's the goal. But in China, it's actually reversed. How do we actually figure out how to make a million Xiaomi cars every year? Well, first you have to figure out how to deal with the raw materials, the battery suppliers, with the different parts suppliers and so on. So it's actually a full breakdown. So the overcapacity actually isn't just in the final product. Yeah.

It's in all the ancillary products in the Tier 1, 3rd, 4, 5th, 6th, 7th suppliers as well throughout the entire country. Now, it's not the same in all industries. I don't want your listeners to get the wrong idea, but you take, for example, EVs, the leaders in EVs are not the SOEs. They're all the private companies. And so one of the significant shifts we've seen in China is that the SOEs and the traditional automotive manufacturers now have a far less, not just dominant position, but influence in the market. It's all the private companies generally.

And so is that overcapacity? That's definitely one of the overhangs for sure. And one of the challenges, you know, I was just in Europe last week. This is one of the debates I keep having with them. You were fine with overcapacity for Germany and Japan. And they ultimately, they're exported more much more every year than whatever China does. Not that the Chinese do it, you have an issue. Like, come on, guys.

Like, you can't have everything. The other thing is, is that in many cases, this is how you develop world-class technology. For example, in EVs, is you have this intense, this Neju-Juan, this extremely intense internal competition. Because that's ultimately- What was the word you used? Neijuan. It's internal, basically fierce internal competition. right. There's another interesting word that has come out a lot, particularly because of the recent moves with the age 20s, is called Chabwadza, basically mean you're strangling us. And so

the Chinese have used this in terms of the Americans saying, hey, you're strangling our industry with semiconductor controls and everything else. And now there's a new discussion about the new Chabwaza in China is, oh, we have rare earths. So now we can also do it, right? So this is kind of an interesting, when you talk about overcapacity, part of my discussion, when you look at supply chains, it really depends on the supply chain. but also where it is. For example, overcapacity is great if you're Australia because you're getting cheap automotive cars out of China, right?

The Japanese don't like it because they're losing market share as an example. So where does it actually work out? One of the interesting things about overcapacity is it's not just overcapacity again in the final product, it's the entire supply chain. So this is one of the things that's contributing to China global. In China, because of this nature, this fierce internal competition, companies, a lot of them, cannot make very much money, if any. So they have to go out.

So what you're seeing now as they go out, they're building supply chains, BYD is the perfect example. They're actually bringing that entire ecosystem with them. So while it may be overcapacity inside China, the benefits to other parts of the ecosystem outside of China is, now you get access to cheaper technology and products overall that you can build locally. I have so many questions. I have to focus. But, okay, net net, would you say that the crackdown on Chinese technology has accelerated China's technological development or hindered it? I'd say it's definitely accelerated it because again, referring to those five parts of the supply chain ecosystem earlier, it essentially focused everything in the entire country and all the companies into this. We have to figure out how to make this work, right? Because now it's an existential threat to our businesses. The one thing I've learned since I've been in China as a kid, never focused the Chinese on a problem because they will attack and kill that problem. And with that, you also see the expenditure of massive amounts of resources. And it is very intensive. It is sometimes waste.

But the end result is pretty clear. You have world-class companies and technology. Speaking of resources, so one thing I remember from my time in Hong Kong was the Chinese government crackdown on education companies and what they termed wasteful capital. And they basically came out and said they wanted to encourage more money to go into high-tech businesses. Is that still happening? And then also, do you see money, government money, maybe lending standards being eased up? up for other industries? Basically, is China using financing to encourage other types of industries to be able to, like, expand, go abroad, things like that? So they're not necessarily using financing like, hey, here's an import, export bank for you, such as the U.S., for example, with Boeing. What they are doing, though, is particularly on, you know,

with different incentives, think AI, for example, they are providing the entire ecosystem, different levels of support. Maybe that support is some finance. Maybe the same. Maybe the support is a guarantee of we'll buy X amount of your product over X number of years. Maybe it's we're going to work with universities to tweak and change our educational programs so we can actually train the new engineers in terms of a more effective way to go into business. That's where we see the changes. Ten years ago, it would be more financial stimulus, financial incentives going out into tax incentives and so on going into the system. But now we're seeing these tweaks and changes because they understand that money isn't everything. You also have to build out all these

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And on the West Coast, catch up in the evening. That's the Bloomberg Law podcast with me, June Grosso. Subscribe today, wherever you. you get your podcast. What separates good leaders from transformational ones? I'm Jessica Chen, and in season two of Leading By Example, we'll sit down with executives like Grace Chen of Bertie Gray to find out. It's important to understand where you spike,

but also really acknowledge where you don't and find people who can fill those gaps. Listen to Leading By Example, executives making an impact on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talk to us about AI. You know, obviously we had the Deep Seek moment that was just earlier this year

kind of feels like ancient history. Have you tried Kimmy yet? Have you heard of this one? There's some company called Moonshot and they have a new model called Kimmy. And some people are saying it's better than Deep Seek. I'm not sure. Have you tried it?

Yeah, you know, they all kind of, it seemed fine. It seemed very good. You know, they all kind of look the same. But how does the AI race look? look for, we know how it looks from the perspective of your deep seek moments, etc. What does the AI race look like in China? You know, it's interesting. It really depends on who you talk to, but my personal belief is that China's ahead and

it's not even close. Great. Yeah, when you look at the deep seek moment, it was a watershed, but there's 100 deep seek equivalents that are coming online. We've only seen 10 of them, right? I don't know what the equivalents are in the States. Sure. But when you look at, again, things like infrastructure, China has copious amounts

of electricity they can build out. They're constantly building out their electricity grid. Last year in 2024, they had 380 gigawatts built out. The U.S. only had 60, maybe 80. I don't remember off the time I head. But essentially, that gives them a huge runway to build out all of these AI, all of these data centers, the talent. I was at the semiconductor show in Shanghai at the end of March, and they had a booth there, semi-U. And essentially, the goal of this organization is to help young graduates get into the fields of the future. Last year, when I talked to them, it was very much over trying to help young graduates get internships and introductions this year was, hey, we're going to have 100,000 graduates going to five key industries, AI, quantum computing, robotics,

semiconductors, and batteries. Now, 100,000 per year, that's more than all of the Western world combined. By the end of the decade, they want to have half a million. That's more than the entire world combined. And when you actually look at how China is building out, again, in this AI situations, and I'll sidestep a bit, when you just look at battery chemistry. Yeah. China has 50 graduate programs of battery chemistry and metallurgy in it. The U.S. doesn't really have that. We have a couple of professors. And so when you look at, again, the talent, the government support, it's not just, hey, guys,

we want to use AI. It's every kid in the country now, from kindergarten all the way on up. I'm even my own kids now. They are mandated starting this fall to have AI education, the entire apparatus in the whole country. And so, again, when you look at these different areas, and I'm like, hey, wait a minute, guys, like, this is not comparable. I'll give an example.

I was in Southern China at a consumer goods manufacturer who I have known and I do work with. They have deep seek in the factory. They have five factors in China, a couple Southeast Asia. I'm like, why do you who make consumer? Why do you have deep seek? And he goes, oh, Cameron, we have a lot of different products. We want to figure out how to use it. We have over 100 R&D and technical guys.

Business is slow because consumer goods in the trade world. I'm trying to have them figure out while we have the time, how to use it. So I go talk to the technology team. the technology team is talking to the entire supply chain, how to use DeepSeek and these different programs to do more efficient business and solve problems. So he shows me his Wii chat system. He's got hundreds of people in a Wii chat group. They're plastic providers. They're raw material producers, the packaging guys. And there's like, oh, yeah, they'll say, you know, I looked at the we chat feed. Oh, this didn't work. Try this. Do that. I don't know what this means. What are you seeing

here was the entire supply chains are having this massive compounding knowledge throughout all of it, from the raw material producer all the way down to the final component manufacturer, the OEM. Then he says, by the way, this is now happening in Vietnam and Thailand because there it's a lot of Chinese management and now their suppliers which are Vietnamese are Thai. So you're seeing this massive compound throughout all of the supply chains and that's just one company, Joe. Is Boeing doing that?

Is Dow Chemical doing that? Is BMW doing that? I would argue no. is why, in my mind, China is very far ahead in the AI race. People look at it as we have breakthroughs, we have this and that, and that's absolutely true. The U.S. is 100% ahead in that. But I call it the metaphysical versus the tangible. The U.S. and the West is going to be great at the metaphysical discoveries and everything else. We're going to build the digital God first. That's right. The technology and the adaptation and the integration is all going to be

Chinese. Joe, this is kind of depressing from a U.S. perspective. I mean, I've been depressed forever. I was born depressed. I wouldn't go there. No, you weren't. No, I wasn't. No, I wasn't. Joe is generally a happy person. I'm a happy guy. You mentioned young people and the education system quite a bit here. But I imagine this is still a shift in the labor force, right? So if more factory jobs are going from China to Vietnam, that means fewer factory jobs domestically. How does all of this, the trade war, the responses from private. private companies in China. How does that play into domestic politics at a time when there's been a lot of anxiety within China about things like youth unemployment? It unifies it more than disunifies it because, again, it gives them a focus. We need to stand up against the attacks that we're receiving. It's actually having the opposite effect in many ways. I think the other thing is people understand that the industry of today is not

going to be the industry of tomorrow. So we have to upskill. We have to train our workers. We have to automate more. If we do have a part or component that really just isn't profitable for us, we can send it to Southeast Asia and it will be profitable, so we need to explore that. So you're seeing there are different ways that they can attack that problem. I have one more question, and I'm also worried it's going to be sort of leading to a depressing answer. But I think it was 2049 that Deng Xiaoping targeted for like, okay, by 2049 we'll have achieved a modern socialist state, maybe modern communist state or something like that. And it seems like one way you could get there is just like have robots do everything.

And I know there's a lot of investment in China in humanoid robotics, which if you could really have a, you know, a robot that more or less moved like a person, pretty incredible productivity games. There's efforts here, obviously, and Tesla's in that space. Can you talk a little bit about like the state of the Chinese humanoid robotics industry, their contribution to essentially reduce it. the burdens of human labor and what the sort of competitive vision for that industry is. I think the competitive vision is still being built out because, again, we don't know exactly what they can and can't do. For example, humanoid robots will be great at repetitive tasks, whether they're on an assembly line or maybe it's, I have to. I saw a video of a full-service gasoline station where the robot filled up the tank.

Sure. I mean, again, those are repetitive. You can only program them for a certain number of variables. Yeah. But things like, you know, when I was, working in carbon fiber, we did a lot of textile production where you had to essentially thread very thin fibers into islet holes to feed into the machine. That will be done by humans for a very long time because it's a very, it seems simple, but it's actually very complex. We have to line everything up, tie everything in accurately and so on. I think the area to look at for robotics in general is, again, do you have the supply chain ecosystem? Yeah. And China has that from all the way from the raw material processing, for example, for the magnets, all the way down

into the installation. And that's why ultimately, again, given where we are currently, China will continue to grow ahead. It's great that Tesla does it. They absolutely should. Competition is better for everybody, but you still get your magnets from China. Now, will they become a problem in the future? Maybe not. Maybe it will. I think that's to be debated. Ultimately, when you look at how it will affect society, we just don't know. I think the one thing to look at, though, is as they continue to grow the supply chain ecosystems in these areas, and regardless of industry, whether it's robotics, it's semiconductors, it's making paper. The reality is, is because you have all of that in your country,

you can tinker with it a lot better than other places in the world. So when you actually talk about the innovation advancements and the ability to tinker on the fly, which China is world-class at, it's often because they have all the different pieces and component parts you talked about the Christmas city earlier. And that's because you can get everything for Christmas in that city. You can get the screws, you can get the tinsel,

you can get a color red, you can get a pink, whatever it may be. And all of that because that ecosystem exists there, it gives you far more flexibility in the future to build something out. Joe, how do you think New Jersey would respond to gas pumping robots? Oh, yeah. It could go either way. It could go either way. Like, is it required full service gas a benefit for the workers or is it just a guaranteed benefit for the drivers? Can I say my guilty thought?

Oh, okay. I like getting gasoline in New Jersey. Sure. You know, like, yeah, I like being lazy and I like having a, because if I'm not like in New Jersey, I'll pump up myself to save the money. But I like having an excuse like, oh, you know, I had to do it. And then I just get to sit in my cars. I don't complain. That's not that bad joke.

Not that guilty. I have just one more question. And it's a really basic one. But maybe you could walk us through or at least give us some color on how the actual paperwork works for these tariffs. Like the hoops that companies are having to jump through in order to. get goods to the U.S. given that the tariff rate seems to change day by day. I would refer them to my best customs broker because I don't deal with that. Because particularly to your point because it's constantly changing and evolving.

The rules are changing. One day you can't move H20 chips and the next day you can. One day you don't have any reverse the next day you can, but they're still tariffed and taxed. But at what rate do they tariff and tax? Because if you get it out of Southeast Asia, it's now a different tariff rate than China, but they both come from China. How does that actually work? The reality is it's so complex now

that hire a professional because that's what I do. Well, I guess I'll ask you one more question then, and it relates to the very beginning of the conversation about Chinese manufacturers building out more of their supply chain in Vietnam and other Asian countries. And one of the things you hear about

is we have to guard against so-called transshipment, which I just take to mean there's something is made in China and then it stops for a cup of coffee in Vietnam and then puts on another boat and suddenly, you know, it's a disguised, important made to look like Vietnam. It sounds like, though, the vision is that that just becomes irrelevant or that that's an unnecessary thing. That actually, it is a Chinese company, but it's actually made in Vietnam.

And that ultimately the idea of like transshipment, the idea of just like something passing through Vietnam is like a temporary thing. But in the end, it will just be made in Vietnam. And that the company and that the vision is not to use Vietnam as a pass-through. The vision is to use Vietnam as the source. No, you're correct. I think the issue with transshipment is the definition that is used now is very 2018. It's not really what's happening. Of course, it still happens on occasion. I'm not denying that. But when you actually look at what's happening, it's the raw materials and semi-processed intermediate goods that are coming into Vietnam and then being processed and moved on. Now, at what point is that Vietnamese versus Chinese, you know, that actually is the debate that nobody knows the answer to. And we haven't received guidance on from the government about what that actually is. Is it X amount of content like it has with the the MSCA or is it something else we don't know? You know, one of the things you hear, and we've talked about this on the podcast, is that anyone

who's been in China for 10, 20, 30 years has seen extraordinary advances in standard of living over this period of time. I've never been to Vietnam. Given all this investment, would someone who's 40 years old in Vietnam today or younger, like in the last 10 years, would you say the quality of life and the quality of infrastructure is massively changed in some of these other countries? Yeah, I would say that. it's also that the standard of living, the job opportunities, right? Or the government's going to have

more money in their coffers for social services because they have better taxation because there is more money coming in. All of that is improved across the board in the region, absolutely. I actually have one last question, which is this isn't the first time that we've seen the U.S. imposed tariffs on China, obviously in the first Trump administration, we had restrictions, although clearly not as stringent as they are now. I kind of think of them as like, maybe practice tariffs for China. So I'm curious, what was the most surprising thing that you learned or witnessed or saw from the first round of tariffs? From the original trade war tariffs? Yeah. I think the thing that I was most surprised at

is that the U.S. didn't understand that it's basically squeezing a balloon. If you squeeze them out of China, they'll go somewhere else, but particularly the Southeast Asia. And that by doing that, the calculus of ABC anywhere but China has now actually cemented Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, and it will never go back to the opposite, particularly with what we're currently doing. And so the surprising things are more for me as on the U.S. side of strategically how do we think about these things and how do we forecast out 5, 10, 15, 20 years, is that even if that was a consideration, it really wasn't given much credence. Those are the things that surprised me more.

Of course, a company, if their tariff, is going to go outside and build somewhere else. Of course, companies that have internal intensive competition are going to want to go to new markets where they can make more profits that's going to happen. That's business. But when you actually look at geopolitics and the evolution of geopolitics, particularly in regards to China, if you, again, if you try to force China into a situation, you're not going to expect the outcome. And the outcome in this particular case of Trade War I.0 is it cemented Chinese influence

in Southeast Asia. the outcome of Trade Board 2.0, although we don't know it, it's essentially now cementing China's lead in supply chains in Asia, Africa, and Europe. We're going to get really freaked out in this country when it's Latam, when it's like in our hemisphere. They're already being freaked down. And I mean, the reality is that when you talk to Chinese businesses, particularly private businesses outside of China,

they know that they have to abide by local rules. And so one of the things that has been most surprising to me is that the U.S. doesn't encourage more Chinese firms, particularly in industries where we have to have the technology, battery and so on. Come here. Not just come here, but you do it our way, right? 51% JV versus 49% and American has to be in charge all data silo. There are certain things you can do that are low-hanging fruit.

And one of the arguments that I use often is, for example, with these advanced supply chains, for example, with EVs, Chinese firms, China has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the last 20 years developing this out. why does the U.S. or Europe want to spend the same? It's stupid. If you want to build it out, invite them to do it, pay them the royalty fee, whatever it comes out to, take the technology and then fork it and make it indigenous.

So instead of 20, 10 years, 20 years behind, now you're two. That's a much different conversation. And these are things, to your point, Tracy, that we just don't see whether we're not taking a bank. Cameron Johnson, thank you so much for coming on. That was a fascinating conversation. Thanks for having me, guys. fascinating and depressing.

Well, that was certainly a very fascinating conversation. I mean, there's a lot to pick up from this idea that China is ahead in AI and that it's not particularly close is like a really interesting contention. Yes, it's an interesting contention because I think here in the U.S., the way people talk about AI is that this is still an area where we maintain some semblance of a quote, lead unquote. Yeah, I also thought, well, I guess the emphasis on the sort of like iterative process of Chinese companies was important because China does have this like

background of taking a particular piece of technology or a way of doing things and then improving on it. So it seems like maybe AI just kind of speeds that up or maybe AI itself is a place where it can kind of deploy that strategy. The other thing I was thinking about is just the importance of the supply network that Cameron was emphasizing and how difficult it is to replicate that? Like, could you imagine a Christmas village in the U.S.? No. No.

And in Shoo Town and Socktown and all of these things. No. It's almost impossible to imagine. You know, I think this is something we've talked about, Sam Dermica of Impulse Labs, you know, the idea that the supply chain is the product, right? And I think hearing him talk about overcapacity, as in it's not about the overcapacity of end products per se. It's about that overcapacity to the extent that that is a meaningful lens of the entire chain, right?

And all the different suppliers. I thought that was like a really interesting idea. You know, another thing that I think is important and it sounds trivial, but setting aside the cost of labor, until we have perfect humanoid robotics, there is no substitute for population, right? And so just the fact that the sheer number of workers, whether we're talking potentially factory workers or the sheer number of STEM graduates, which to some extent might be about educational priorities, but to another extent is also just going to be about the sheer number of people in the world. It ends up being a meaningful qualitative difference. What was the stat that Cameron threw out 100,000

STEM graduates or something per year? Yeah, like more than all the Western countries combined. That's stunning. Multiple battery majors and the U.S. doesn't have any just, anyway, I don't know. We got to go to shoe city. We got to go to shoe city. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Oddlots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me at The Stallworth. Follow our guest Cameron Johnson. He's at Cam R. Johnson. Follow our producers, Carmen Roderriguez, at Carmen, Dachell Bennett at Dashbot and Kale Brooks.

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