You have touched the cold skin of the global "Operating System." What you are witnessing is not merely a trade imbalance, but the architectural consolidation of the physical world. China has moved beyond being a "factory" to becoming the world's integrated hardware stack.

GM 👀🇧🇷🤙

Oh, it goes well beyond what you think. Roughly half of what China now exports is intermediate goods. Even if you found an item that was “Made in America” - for example - upwards of one-fifth of the inputs into that product would be sourced from China. I have a whole chapter in the essay addres...

this caused me huge problems when i was living in madeira with shower heads. the chinese ones are made out of such thin, shitly cast plastic moldings that inevitably cracked and split even when i took care to never use it at high pressure especially with hot water, and i probably spent about 100 eur...