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Its difficult because japan is not a resource region country. They don't want to reshore production because its costly to source all of the materials they need.

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China is not a resource region county for a lot of things it needs produce products either. That is why they import raw materials from places like Africa and are more than happy to help pave roads to make it easier to get things out.

Sorry meant to say resource rich. Its hard to overstate how few resources japan has at its disposal. This caused their aggression during WWII. China has some resources just far fewer than their population plus they are attempting to export their way to affluence which means they are also producing the world's goods, not just goods for the population of china. China is definitely not resource rich but better off than japan in that way.

While this is true, it's become extremely cheap to move raw materials around these days. Shipping ore from Australia to China was at something like $8 a ton (I assume changed due to recent crisis).

I'd expect with Japan internal shipping costs may be a greater problem. They intentionally distributed their industries around the country.

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