The War I Watched Unfold
I remember the exact moment I understood what was happening to American manufacturing.
It was 2003. I was standing on the factory floor of my electronics company, AVG Group, watching a shipment of Human Machine Interface panels arrive from a Chinese competitor. They were selling finished products at prices below what it cost me to buy the raw components. Not below my manufacturing cost. Below my materials cost.
How is that possible, I asked myself. The answer was simple, and it was not flattering to those who had spent decades celebrating globalization: sustained, strategic, state-backed industrial warfare. Subsidies. Currency manipulation. Intellectual property theft. Forced technology transfer. And a masterplan executed over decades while America debated the finer points of free trade theory.
From 1990 to 2010, I watched China systematically dismantle American electronics manufacturing. Not through superior innovation. Not through better products. Through unrestricted economic warfare, waged with the patience of a nation that thinks in centuries while American boardrooms think in quarterly earnings reports.
I wrote about this in 2019. I argued then that we needed tariffs on finished goods, not just components. Tariff Chinese PCs, not just motherboards, and we win back 80% of the market and create over a million American jobs. Tariff HMI finished products, and we created 30,000 jobs in my sector alone. President Trump listened. He acted. And now, the fight has entered a new and more complex phase.
The Supreme Court Ruling: A Setback, Not a Surrender
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA-based tariffs in a 6-3 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. The free trade lobby celebrated. The globalist consensus exhaled in relief.
They celebrated too soon.
The Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act cannot serve as a broad-spectrum tariff authority. Importantly, the ruling did not disturb other existing tariffs that did not rely on IEEPA, including those imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Hours after the ruling, President Trump announced a new 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, and declared that all tariffs active under Section 232 and Section 301 would remain in full force and effect. Section 122 authorizes temporary global tariffs to address fundamental international payments problems, limited to 15% and a maximum of 150 days, absent congressional extension. Meanwhile, on March 11, 2026, the US Trade Representative launched sweeping Section 301 investigations covering China, the European Union, and dozens of other countries in connection with manufacturing sector surpluses and forced labor practices — building the formal evidentiary record required to impose more durable tariffs down the road.
Section 301 requires formal investigations and public hearings before tariffs can be imposed. Good. Let the American people hear the evidence. Let manufacturers testify about what they witnessed firsthand. Let the record show, in detail and on the public record, how China systematically hollowed out American industrial capacity while too many in our political and business class looked the other way.
The legal vehicle has changed. The destination has not.
The Trade Surplus Argument, Answered Honestly
Critics of tariff policy point to a damaging-looking number. China recorded a trade surplus of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, the largest in its history, defying tariffs President Trump imposed as it sent more exports to other parts of the world. Does that mean the policy failed?
It does not. But it does mean the policy is incomplete, and honesty requires saying so.
China’s exports to the US fell 28% in 2025. The surplus was sustained by routing exports to other markets, with exports to Africa surging 26%, Southeast Asian countries jumping 13%, the European Union 8%, and Latin America 7%. These are the tactics of a long-term strategic competitor, not a free market participant playing by shared rules.
The correct response is not to abandon tariffs. It is to close the transshipment loopholes, strengthen rules of origin enforcement, and extend trade pressure to countries serving as conduits. It is also to pair tariffs with sustained domestic investment, in workforce training, manufacturing infrastructure, and research and development, so that American producers can compete on cost and quality over the long term, not just survive behind a temporary wall.
Tariffs are a necessary condition for reshoring American manufacturing. They are not, by themselves, a sufficient one.
The Supply Chain Revolution Is Real
While the legal arguments proceed, something consequential is happening on the ground.
Supply chain executives now treat tariffs as a permanent feature of the business landscape, not a temporary political disruption to be waited out. That shift in assumption is the single most important change in global commerce in thirty years, and it is already reshaping investment flows.
Companies are diversifying away from China at rates that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Vietnam, India, Mexico, and the Philippines are absorbing manufacturing capacity that once flowed exclusively to Chinese factories. Investment announcements in American manufacturing are surging. Trade deficits are beginning to narrow.
This is real. It is also fragile. Reshoring takes years to execute and requires policy consistency that American politics does not always provide. The companies making long-term capital commitments today are betting that the national consensus behind this shift is durable. Policymakers owe them that durability.
What Must Happen Now
To policymakers: use Section 232 and Section 301 strategically and aggressively, as surgical instruments of long-term industrial policy rather than blunt political gestures. Tariff finished goods, not just components. Close transshipment loopholes. Create tax incentives for sustained domestic investment, not just announcement-day headlines.
To business leaders: stop treating this moment as a disruption to be managed until things return to normal. They will not return to normal. The companies that diversify their supply chains now, that invest in domestic capacity now, that engage the public policy process now, will own the next thirty years. The ones waiting for certainty will find that certainty never came.
To the American public: understand that we are in an economic competition that began decades ago, that we did not start, and that we cannot afford to lose. The Supreme Court ruling was one moment in a much longer contest. What is at stake is not just jobs and trade balances. It is whether the United States remains a nation that makes things, and with it, a nation that retains the industrial and technological foundation on which its security and prosperity depend.
I did not build a manufacturing company in America to watch that foundation erode. I do not believe most Americans, whatever their politics, want to watch it erode either. That shared conviction, more than any tariff or court ruling, is what this fight ultimately depends on.
The reshoring revolution has begun. The question is whether we have the national will to see it through.
Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar is the founder and chairman of AVG Group, an American electronics manufacturer. He has advised policymakers on US trade and industrial policy for over two decades.
