>>512422654It isn't as simple as you say. China has been playing the long game in order to gain global power. For many years I could go to harbor freight and buy completed tools for less money that I could buy the raw material for in the US. China treats inputs like copper as a utility. The government does everything in its power to drive the cost of any input, copper, iron, concrete, electricity, labor, as low as possible to make their industry as competitive as possible. Then the companies on top of that steal IP, spin up massive manufacturing, sell at a loss to force foreign plant closure, then raise prices - this is what has just come out of congress related to drug availability in the US.
The problem isn't quite that china is too cheap; It is that China as it exists now cannot be integrated into the global economy - which is what was attempted from Clinton on. How do you integrate Chinese companies, that don't care about profit, into the mostly capitalist economic system lead/exemplified by the US.
I suspect you may be a leftypol visitor that believes intrinsically in the superiority of the Chinese system; but for the average man on the street in china that system isn't all that great, and there is no real future for him, or us, or really anybody. China is being cut loose, and anybody that teams up with them in BRICS without massive trade protection is going to experience country ending deflation.
In terms of domestic mfg prices; as the US tools up again, it is going to be pretty automated. As volumes rise, prices fall. Your shower head example is probably coming from a Chinese plant making millions against a boutique mfgr in the US (low volume) paying us wages and dealing with US regulation.