Like I said, it’s complicated, but to get a good sense of how the global economy has shifted, you only have to look at the explosive growth of the middle class in Asian economies, their steadily increasing life expectancies, and their growing importance to the west as trade partners (It’s not just China and Taiwan despite the political rhetoric surrounding both).

That middle class growth is coming from money we in developed countries are spending every day, and have been spending for decades. We depend on Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam especially significantly for technology and certain foods, but also for more mundane and often forgotten things like clothes and housewares and medicine. Thailand is one of the world’s largest net exporters of pet food. We don’t think of the things we use every day that come from other countries, but the fact is most of them do, and many of them we would not be pleased to have to accept any substitute or disruption for.