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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Most likely supply chain managers will establish "second source" policies, just like the US Defense Department has always done for many products. They won't necessarily move away from China entirely, but will build factories in other countries as well.

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Yeah, this crisis has illustrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that you need second-, third-, fourth- sources if you can. Especially for critical goods. Moving to Vietnam doesn't do anything to solve the fundamental problem. It may not even make sense to build a second- source in vietnam. You want geographic and, to the extent that it's possible, population isolation.

So finding someplace along one of South America's coasts would be attractive. Australia would be extremely attractive if we could get automation right because labor costs there are just too high. Africa would also be attractive in the extreme. You wouldn't even have to take the resources off of the continent. Lowest labor costs around. Plus, two enormous coasts full of warm water ports.

Anyway, the idea would be to set things up so that if one region goes to the dogs, you just switch to the other.

EDIT: Now I think about it, there are some pretty large political issues in africa right now, so maybe africa wouldn't be the best place. Populism could easily end up landing you in the same situation as white farmers in Zimbabwe. Anyway, the fundamental idea still stands. Balance manufacturing from Asia and N America more towards S America, and Australia.

I agree, though in the long term this still means China represents a smaller percentage of the world's manufacturing.

There is growing political demand to move away from China entirely though. I doubt its particularly popular with most people with influence, but if we've learned anything from 2016 it's that populism can be an unexpectedly potent force. If someone were to force the issue, the new GOP party line could very well end up being policy to move manufacturing away from China.

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