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US-China trade

Trade agreements between the world's two largest economies are now negotiated in fragments. Rather than a comprehensive settlement, what emerges is a series of partial understandings covering specific tariff lines, purchase commitments and enforcement pauses, each with its own expiry and each leaving the underlying strategic dispute unresolved. Reading the latest framework as a resolution misunderstands what it is.

• Final assembly has genuinely shifted to Southeast Asia and Mexico across several product categories.
• Component supply for that assembly still originates overwhelmingly from the same Chinese suppliers, so the dependency moved one step upstream rather than disappearing.
• Rules-of-origin enforcement has tightened in response, adding compliance cost without changing the physical supply chain much.
• The net effect for importers is a longer, more expensive route to the same components.