As Donald Trump’s trade war brings new levels of uncertainty to the American manufacturing sector, a problem seems to have been largely neglected: the massive legion of China robots.
New report by the New York Times On Chinese robotics highlights the enormous automation scale that occurs across the Pacific. The article highlights the fact that China is currently one of the most automated countries in the world, with more capacity than the United States, Germany or even Japan – and more robots by worker than any other country in addition to South Korea and Singapore.
Automation on such a massive scale allows Chinese factories to pump consumer and industrial goods with a constant increase in cost, while refining the quality of the products.
The United States, in comparison, quickly delay in robotics. In recent years, American manufacturing has passed from consumer and industrial products to high -tech products such as planes, medical devices and advanced machines. These concerts call for highly specialized skills which cannot be easily reset in robots – at least, not without considerably move our robotics industry of pie startups in practical manufacturing efforts.
It turns out that this is exactly what China has done to become the Robo-Mecca, from 2015 with a national strategy called “Made in China 2025”. As its name suggests, the effort led by the government presented quality performance and references so that Chinese manufacturing is struck by this current year, including in sectors such as naval construction, electric vehicles and high -speed rail.
Among the objectives, there was the capacity to produce 100,000 industrial robots per year, according to the point of sale managed by the State Daily China. A recent report by the International Robotics Federation has revealed that between 2022 and 2023, China has deployed more than 276.00 Robookers – more than half of all the robots installed throughout the world, and the second annual deployment of the highest recorded industrial robotics.
To complicate things for the United States, unique access to rare land metals, which are crucial for high-tech manufacturing, especially robotics. American factories strongly depend on these materials, giving China a huge negotiation broadcast in the Trump trade war.
For example, China has interrupted the export of rare metals to the United States earlier this month in response to Trump prices – causing an uproar from its close ally Elon Musk, who said that this would hinder its own robotics efforts – in addition to other measures to strengthen Beijing on the negotiation board.
A few weeks later, Trump announced that the tax rates threatened on Chinese products “will drop considerably”, suggesting that the Chinese government has played their cards.
How are you Probably be a while before seeing who emerges the winner of this trade war, if someone “really wins”. But if American leaders want to have serious to intensify their manufacturing game, it seems that there is an obvious choice: stop quarrel and start to cooperate with the clear winner in the arms race of robotics.
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