Very recommendable! Apparently, US companies have already significantly diversified their supply chains away from China before President Trump's second term.
The research study is in so far flawed as it was already published in November of 2025 (revised April 2026), which means it is able to evaluate only a very few months of foreign trade data since President Trump imposed new tariffs on 4/2/2026. Probably, to little data!
"Last year’s US-imposed tariffs sped up significant trade shifts—toward Mexico and away from China—that began years earlier and have diversified American imports among top partners.
While the Trump administration’s major tariff announcement on April 2, 2025, was billed as “Liberation Day,” research by Harvard Business School ... suggests that companies were already positioned to adjust to the levies. The recalibration of supply chains has been so profound that US imports from China have returned to near-2001 levels, when the country entered the World Trade Organization. ..."
From the abstract:
"This paper documents stylized facts about the “Great Reallocation” in US supply chain trade following the 2018–2019 tariff shocks and the April 2025 Liberation Day announcements.
We find that:
(i) The US has decoupled from China but not from the world overall.
(ii) US imports diversified mainly among its top-20 partners, rather than expanding to new source countries.
(iii) Local linear projections confirm ongoing declines in China’s import shares, with compensating increases from Vietnam, Mexico, and Taiwan.
(iv) Most of this shift occurred along the product-level intensive margin, though extensive margin adjustments became more pronounced for Vietnam and India from 2021-2024.
(v) After a period of “wait and see”, the decline in import shares from China spread to contract-intensive and relationship-sticky goods by 2021-2024.
(vi) Trade reallocation has already accelerated after Liberation Day, in favor of trade partners facing lower additional tariffs and with geographically proximate supply networks.
Together, these findings show that the US-China tariff shocks have unwound the US’ sourcing from China back to where it stood at the time of China’s WTO accession."
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