For U.S. politicians and the public, shortages of N95 masks and other key medical equipment at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis highlighted just how dependent the United States had become on production in China. The Trump administration’s aggressive policy toward China was broadly popular, despite potential negative side effects. In the first 10 months of 2020 the exact phrase “decouple from China” or “decoupling from China” appeared in three times as many articles as in the previous three years combined.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.
