It is interesting that almost all of these articles about the Chinese decoupling from US supplies do not even investigate the infrastructure constraints that lock the Chinese into its US suppliers. Case in point is ethane, used by most of China's plastic manufacturers. The global ethane market is locked into long term contracts and the supply is constricted by the limited amount of VLECs (Very large ethane carriers) that are already chartered. Even if China can negotiate to buy someone else's long term contracts, China can not readily get VLECs prepositioned to transport the ethane to their markets. So China is locked into the US supplies or has to do without. There are many other such commodities that have this same set up. China weaning itself off of US ethane might take a year, if they are lucky, and probably several years. The US conversely, because much of its trade is consumer oriented and not industrial, has an easier time decoupling. This is not to say that the US is not locked into some Chinese industrial goods either, the US is highly dependent upon the Chinese to manufacture utility grade electrical transformers. So the sword cuts both ways.
It is interesting that almost all of these articles about the Chinese decoupling from US supplies do not even investigate the infrastructure constraints that lock the Chinese into its US suppliers. Case in point is ethane, used by most of China's plastic manufacturers. The global ethane market is locked into long term contracts and the supply is constricted by the limited amount of VLECs (Very large ethane carriers) that are already chartered. Even if China can negotiate to buy someone else's long term contracts, China can not readily get VLECs prepositioned to transport the ethane to their markets. So China is locked into the US supplies or has to do without. There are many other such commodities that have this same set up. China weaning itself off of US ethane might take a year, if they are lucky, and probably several years. The US conversely, because much of its trade is consumer oriented and not industrial, has an easier time decoupling. This is not to say that the US is not locked into some Chinese industrial goods either, the US is highly dependent upon the Chinese to manufacture utility grade electrical transformers. So the sword cuts both ways.