They are different political stunts though. If your supply chain is vulnerable to politics then you want options so that any one stunt cannot hurt you.
Also, while there are political stunts, my current reading is the US stunts are more temporary and the next president won't continue them. While China's are likely longer term - there is a reasonably possibly China will attack Taiwan and Europe will join with the US and defending. Only time will tell, but that is my read on the situation.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/canadian-military-e...
I am not sure you understand the damage this administration has done.
It's a little sad that Trump is such a divisive train-wreck spectacle that many haven't noticed that Clinton, Obama and Biden were achieving many of the same outcomes as Bush/Trump, just more smoothly and with more appealing rationalizations.
The best thing about Trump is that he's such an obvious self-interested kleptocrat and he doesn't even care to hide it (in fact, he seems to enjoy flaunting it). But is it really that much better to be sold out by a more likeable persona who seems like part of our tribe and has the skills to mask the long con more deftly? I guess maybe at least then we won't notice as much or feel as bad about the same outcome?
And here in Europe we're busy divesting from both. The priority for now is getting rid of the US simply because of the erratic President but if you read between the lines, a lot of the plans also aim for getting rid of the dependence on China.
I'd imagine that just because they've decided it's good enough to go public with it, doesn't mean it's done getting better. Or that someone else can't do it better, now that it's been shown to work.
It's not a prototype. The Grid has been running for customers for five years. It already builds tens of millions of dollars of electronics a year. Across CircuitHub we've shipped more than 2.2 million boards, placed more than 150 million parts and served more than 26,000 engineers.
Meanwhile as a hobbyist I'd be glad for the discount "we will get around to it sometime in the next two weeks discount"
In Shenzhen you can have Some Guy in a truck doing a parts pickup round around town a couple of times a day. In the US you're waiting for overnight Fedex from Digikey. And sure, there's a lot you can stock in advance, but virtually every board will have this one weird part you don't stock yet.
Plus if you can get someone on the phone there can be value in that.
And if a sales engineer comes out and sees your operation you might get more than a free lunch…