‘China’s edge and America’s fragility’

This is apropos several letters to the Editor from this writer carried by the newspaper in recent days. De-escalation abroad must be matched by seriousness at home. The United States needs a long-horizon, bipartisan programme that outlasts election cycles and that treats production as a national capability, not a slogan.

That means modernizing ports and shipyards so output can compound rather than stall; accelerating permitting without waiving environmental standards; building regional hubs for magnets, specialty chemicals, and advanced components with public-private risk sharing; aligning procurement with delivery so firms are paid to produce, not to promise; and investing in workforce pipelines that can staff mines, mills, fabs, and yards. Recycling and re-use should be embedded from the start so domestic supply is not only larger but also more resilient when prices swing.

The same principle should guide the data front. The United States can and should protect sensitive datasets and core algorithms, but it should avoid broad regimes that punish neutral commercial activity or force partners to choose camps. A narrower, predictably enforced set of rules will better protect security without undermining competitiveness. Data is valuable because it flows; policy that freezes it indiscriminately tends to reduce American firms’ reach more than it constrains China’s.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025