There is going to be much finger pointing when this virus is brought under some semblance of control. A lot of that pointing will be aimed directly at China and there will be an ever increasing clamour, not from governments I suspect but more media fuelled, to boycott products made in China or at the very least consider alternatives.
This hobby shows that many of us, myself included, have up until now had no qualms about buying products manufactured in China. Whether, as individuals, this continues to be the case is perhaps open to question.
Are there any major TS companies that don't manufacture in China out of interest? I genuinely don't know.
No country can invent everything, produce everything, grow everything or have all the natural resources they need. That's why import and export are important for every modern economy.
But if at all possible countries need to keep certain critical essentials produced in their own nation. High tech components needed for medical and military applications, life saving medications,
communication and data processing equipment along with necessary software for example should not be reliant on foreign production.
In the 70's all my military electronics customers were instructed by the government to buy only American made components. But more and more of the lower tech products went over to Japan and
Europe, then Korea, Taiwan and China. So there was no choice but for these makers to buy foreign components. We did keep many of the highest technology components here in the US but without
the commodity products you couldn't finish the assemblies anyway.
Not smart to rely on other countries, especially those with a potential for conflict, to build your military and technical infrastructure.
This Pandemic should teach us that we need to bolster domestic manufacturing of critical products even if we have to subsidize the makers.
No problem for toys, clothing and consumer goods to be made overseas to keep the costs down, however.
