Right for possibly different reasons

I have commented before on just how many controversies Trump turned out to be correct about.  The mainstream media said one thing and Trump said another (usually bombastically).  As the controversies recede, the emerging evidence indicates ever more frequently just how right Trump was.  The unreliability of the FBI and Intelligence agencies; the need for Europe to rearm and be less dependent on US might; the need to disengage from nation-building diplomacy; the distrust of government agencies (such as the CDC); the importance for all Americans of a growth economy policy; the pursuit of energy independence; etc.  

Obviously he was sometimes wrong.  He never seriously tackled the deficit nor did he reform government agencies.  It is no good reducing the number of regulations if you leave in place those who generated the regulations in the first place.  It all just regrows as soon as there is a chance.  

And sometimes he was right for the wrong reasons.

I am thinking in particular about China.  My assessment at the time was that some of Trump's goals were correct in terms of re-shoring parts of our manufacturing and supply chain capabilities but I was dubious of how the argument was framed and especially concerned as the effort veered into trade-war territory.  

But there was a larger picture which I grasped but I don't think I adequately weighted.  

Pre-Covid, China was already becoming a more expensive country to do business and international corporations were beginning to move manufacturing into Bangladesh, Vietnam and other similar countries.  This was neither unexpected nor unwelcome.  Specialization and competition is healthy for the whole global economy even though it comes at a cost of disruption to individuals and to countries.

During the Trump trade wars, a term used with some frequency was "decoupling" as in decoupling from the Chinese economy.  The more China became the manufacturing center of the world, the more it became a potential liability in global power struggles and we were already seeing that with China's willingness to use trade in its Belt and Road Initiative.  

It is in everyone's best interests for all countries to be securely prosperous.  The risks are when there is a sudden change in condition and authoritarians then use that increasing productivity for military, economic and/or national competition.  With China not only being increasingly productive but also, under Xi, becoming increasingly totalitarian, the US and the EU faced an obvious challenge with keeping China in the global community when it was clearly flexing its military and economic muscles in coercive ways.

With the disruptions arising from both Covid-19 and the Russian-Ukraine war, the importance of decoupling from China has become dramatically clearer.  The goal is not to punish China but we can no longer afford the luxury belief that simply turning a blind eye towards their increasing coercion will end well.

Trump was right to emphasize re-shoring but the reasons for doing so are more complicated than were advanced at the time.  

We don't have to replace China and we don't need to re-shore everything but we do need to be far less dependent on them, and especially, our corporations need to be far less subservient of Chinese goals, than had been the case.