A “Make American Robust Once more” banner hangs on the wall as rows upon rows of chubby employees assemble Nike sneakers; one lifts a burger as much as his mouth as he eats whereas working, one other rests his head on the stitching machine in entrance of him, barely capable of hold his eyes open.
It’s a caricature of U.S. manufacturing that Chinese language netizens have been laughing at over the previous week, as social media platforms have seen a wave of AI-generated movies portraying what some suppose it could seem like for People to work in sweatshop-like textile factories and iPhone meeting traces extra generally related to China.
As U.S. President Donald Trump escalates a commerce battle with China that he started in his first time period—seeing tariffs, that are taxes on imports, as a path to revive a U.S. manufacturing sector that has steadily declined over decades—China’s authorities has made its opposition clear: After Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he hiked tariffs on all world commerce companions, Chinese language state media produced AI-generated parody videos slamming Trump’s method as pricey, divisive, and harmful. After Trump introduced a 90-day pause for different nations however additional hiked tariffs on China, which now stand at 145%, China’s finance ministry raised its retaliatory tariff on U.S. items to 125% however stated that it wouldn’t proceed to reply with tit-for-tat will increase, arguing that doing so quantities to nothing greater than a “numbers recreation” as the present price already makes imports from the U.S. prohibitively costly.
“It might be a joke,” the ministry stated, promising different unspecified countermeasures if its pursuits proceed to be infringed.
However whereas a commerce battle between the world’s two largest economies is actually not funny for Beijing, the AI-generated movies gone viral amongst Chinese language social media customers satirizing fictitious American manufacturing employees do get at a extra severe reality.
“The joke is People don’t wish to do these jobs,” Mark Cogan, affiliate professor of peace and battle research at Japan’s Kansai Gaidai College and a U.S. nationwide, tells TIME. “We’re the punchline.”
The financial actuality
Trump has promised that his tariffs will usher in a “new golden age” for American employees, harkening again to an industrial previous that has been misplaced to a long time of globalization. The logic goes that by elevating the worth of international items, companies and shoppers can be discouraged from importing and as an alternative spend money on U.S.-based manufacturing and American-made items. However the irony, economists say, is that the commerce deficits that he seeks to reverse are an indication of the U.S. economy’s relative dominance, not weak spot.
“The U.S. is at a state of growth the place it has moved past manufacturing,” Jayant Menon, a analysis fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, beforehand instructed TIME. “That is what manufacturing nations are attempting to aspire to, and this man is attempting to go the opposite method.”
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What’s extra more likely to occur, economists have stated, is that because the comparatively low-cost items that People are accustomed to with the ability to purchase dramatically rise in worth, shoppers will merely purchase fewer issues. And larger U.S.-based manufacturing wouldn’t essentially lead to decrease costs as a result of it could nonetheless contain larger prices—for a lot of abroad producers, paying the tariff would nonetheless be less expensive than relocating to the U.S.
The largest the reason why China and never the U.S. has come to be the world’s “sole manufacturing superpower,” or “the world’s factory,” are its larger labor provide and thus decrease wages, extra environment friendly home enterprise and provide chain ecosystem, and comparatively lax regulatory atmosphere. Tariffs alone received’t change these underlying elements for the U.S.
“If you consider producing a laptop computer in China versus the U.S.,” says Yuan Mei, assistant professor within the College of Economics at Singapore Administration College, “in China a variety of elements and parts of the laptop computer are produced inside China, so transport these parts throughout the nation is fairly low-cost.” Many different parts, like chips, are produced in different Asian nations, like Japan and South Korea, which additionally means comparatively cheaper transport to China than to the U.S.
However the mismatch between America’s workforce and China’s is maybe the largest impediment to shifting a major quantity of producing from China to the U.S. Within the U.S., as of March 2025, just below 13 million workers are employed within the manufacturing sector, whereas simply over 7 million People are unemployed. China’s manufacturing sector, in the meantime, employs more than 100 million people, whereas excessive unemployment and low rules suppress wages and labor circumstances.
Whereas many People—80% of respondents to a CATO Institute survey—agree in precept with the concept the U.S. could be higher off if extra People labored in manufacturing, far fewer would truly wish to take such a job themself: solely 25% of the CATO survey’s respondents stated they believed they’d be higher off in a producing job.
Furthermore, economists have noted that a lot of the manufacturing work that may very well be transplanted to the U.S. may very well be extra effectively automated, or executed by machines as an alternative of people, whereas lots of the jobs that will be wanted could require abilities that the U.S. is brief on.
The manufacturing sector depends closely on engineers, Mei says, and engineering is amongst China’s hottest school majors. Within the U.S., however, a large proportion of engineering and tech expertise is worldwide college students—and with the Trump Administration’s crackdowns on immigrants and international students, there may finally be, Mei says, a “hole within the provide” of engineers that the U.S. wants to spice up its home manufacturing.
From mocking to hawking
Mei tells TIME he observed the memes of American manufacturing facility employees began to unfold in current weeks amid the escalating U.S.-China commerce battle, when Chinese language social media customers started questioning what American merchandise could grow to be costlier as a consequence of Chinese language retaliatory tariffs. That morphed into conversations concerning the distinction between a model being American, of which there are various instances, and its manufacturing being U.S.-based, which is way rarer.
“Many netizens realized that there are few examples of day by day merchandise which might be produced within the U.S.,” says Mei, noting the exceptions of very costly excessive tech devices, plane, and pharmaceutical merchandise.
Somewhat, the U.S.’s comparative benefit is within the providers sector, Mei says. “Suppose Silicon Valley.” (Observers believe Beijing will subsequent flip its sights to U.S. providers exports, focusing on American skilled, authorized, technological, telecommunications, schooling, well being, leisure, and different providers, a lot of which have already been scrutinized and restricted, to exert strain amid the commerce battle.)
The AI-generated movies depicting People taking manufacturing facility jobs, says Ashley Dudarenok, who runs a China and Hong Kong-based client analysis consultancy, relied on subverting a “long-standing stereotype about world labor dynamics.” And rapidly, she tells TIME, the caricature was “completely all over the place, and it’s nonetheless trending.”
“There was the commerce battle, there was the tariff battle, and now there may be the meme battle,” Dudarenok says.
Even among the many Chinese language workforce, more and more aspire to work in sectors apart from manufacturing. Dudarenok says throughout Chinese language social media she’s seen feedback saying, “Chinese language individuals don’t wish to do these jobs, why would People wish to do these jobs?” or “Chinese language producers are transferring into Vietnam, into Africa—now we’ve another choice: America.”
Nonetheless, the tariffs are not any joke to these in China whose livelihoods rely upon manufacturing items for export. Some have additionally taken to social media to answer the tariffs: by explaining how cheaply they really manufacture items and the way a lot of the worth shoppers paid pre-tariffs got here from model markups.
Some have even appealed to People to purchase immediately from them. “They wish to eliminate the intermediary,” says Mei. However shoppers ought to beware that claiming to fabricate for giant manufacturers whereas truly producing knock-offs is a standard rip-off, and a few scammers may very well be exploiting client panic about potential worth hikes. Whereas China produces greater than half of the world’s clothes and textiles, Dudarenok says producers which might be “trusted companions” with large manufacturers don’t usually promote their companions out so simply.
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A messaging win for Beijing
If social media sentiment is something to go off of, Mei says that there’s a variety of help amongst Chinese language residents for the federal government’s coverage choices associated to Trump’s commerce battle. “It’s seen as factor that they’re imposing retaliatory tariffs. A small share of Chinese language netizens are nonetheless anxious, and say that possibly we should always simply yield to the U.S., however the majority agree with the stance of the Chinese language authorities.”
The federal government’s message is evident, Dudarenok says: “China is ready to battle for its proper to be within the room and to be on the desk.”
Mei has even seen memes depicting China defending different nations from U.S. bullying or suggesting China is the one nation courageous sufficient to face up for itself.
However the sentiment isn’t simply standard on Chinese language social media. Reshares of posts standard on Chinese language social media to X and TikTok, that are blocked inside mainland China although nonetheless accessed by many customers by way of VPNs, have garnered thousands and thousands of views and tens of 1000’s of likes. Though it’s not clear who’s producing and sharing the unique movies, Cogan, the peace and battle research professor in Japan, says it’s however a “large win for China.”
“I feel that the Chinese language perceive fairly effectively the truth that American society is kind of divided, and at this explicit stage of our political polarization, People actually don’t care whose propaganda they’re spreading or the place the meme truly comes from—so that they’re keen to unfold no matter … so long as it furthers their very own political messaging.”
