The U.S. and China are copying each other, giving rise to memes and mockery

NBC News

09-04-2025

President Donald Trump wants to bring back American manufacturing in ways that would reshape the United States economy to look more like China's. The campaign, which has led to a rapidly escalating trade war with China, has given ample social media fodder to Chinese and American observers alike.
Announcing a series of sweeping tariffs in a move dubbed 'Liberation Day,' Trump said last week that this will lead factories to move production back to American shores, boosting the U.S. economy after 'foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.'
In a Truth Social post Wednesday, Trump announced that he is raising tariffs on goods imported from China to 125%, up from the 104% that took effect the same day, due to 'the lack of respect that China has shown to the World's Markets.'
Meme-makers and Chinese government officials have in recent days begun pointing out the irony of Trump's tariff-driven manufacturing pivot through AI-generated satire and political cartoons that have percolated online, with many American users boosting the jokes.
One video poking fun at the Trump administration's attempted pivot to American manufacturing has accumulated millions of views on X since a user posted it on TikTok earlier this week. The clip, seemingly generated with artificial intelligence, showed workers sewing garments and assembling mobile devices in a factory, followed by a screen touting: 'Make America Great Again.'
Others reshared an old political cartoon depicting Trump, with nearly everything in the drawing, including the president's suit and the American flag he's raising, labeled as being 'Made in China' — all except for Trump's own gaseous product, which is labeled as 'Made in USA.'
Official Chinese accounts have also gotten in on the fun. Last weekend, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, posted a meme appearing to mock Trump for imposing tariffs on several largely barren Antarctic islands inhabited by penguins rather than people.
Some have been subtler with their critiques. On Monday, the Chinese Embassy reposted a clip of a 1987 speech given by President Ronald Reagan, whose economic agenda hugely influenced mainstream Republican economics today. In it, Reagan staunchly defends free trade.
'You see, at first when someone says, 'Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports,' it looks like they're doing a patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works. But only for a short time,' Reagan says in the clip, before launching into a list of consequences.
Trump's calls to embrace domestic manufacturing come as China has pushed to make its economy look more like that of the U.S. Aiming to reduce its economic reliance on exports, China has been struggling to encourage domestic consumption, expanding subsidies for home appliances such as microwaves and rice cookers, as well as smartphones and other electronic devices.
By contrast, Trump's vision for the United States, whose high consumption of Chinese-manufactured goods has helped propel China's economic rise, involves industrial revival for everything from aluminum refining to shipbuilding.
At least in the short term, both the U.S. and Chinese goals are 'pipe dreams,' said Ian Johnson, formerly a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
'China has been trying for decades to promote consumption or to get people to consume more, but for a variety of reasons Chinese people aren't willing to do that,' Johnson said in a phone interview Tuesday, citing the lack of social safety net that drives high levels of personal savings.
'The government hasn't changed structural issues that hold back consumption,' Johnson said. 'So until they do that, that's not going to work.'
On the U.S. side, Johnson said, 'it's difficult because the government is trying to turn back the clock and I don't think that's fully possible, no matter how high the tariffs are.'
'You're never going to bring back, for example, shoe manufacturing, or things like that, or textile manufacturing to the United States, because it's still going to be too expensive, even if you put 100% tariffs," he said.
Some American manufacturing jobs, Johnson said, 'are just gone forever and are not going to come back. And in the case of China, their goal is more reasonable, but it would require huge changes in how the economy and society are structured.'
Trump has alluded to his vision of American industrial revival in justifying mounting tariffs on Chinese goods, starting with 20% in additional tariffs he imposed in February and March, citing China's role in the international flow of fentanyl precursors.
Last week, he announced a baseline 10% tariff on imports from all countries, with higher tariffs for dozens of specific trading partners — particularly China. On Wednesday, he announced that he will pause higher tariffs for 90 days on some trading partners that have not retaliated, although the 10% baseline tariff will remain in place for all countries.
On Tuesday, before Trump announced the new 125% tariff, China vowed to 'resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own interests.'
'The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake upon a mistake, further exposing the coercive nature of the U.S.,' the Commerce Ministry said in a statement. 'If the U.S. insists in its own way, China will fight to the end.'
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump said China 'wants to make a deal, badly, but they don't know how to get it started.'
'We are waiting for their call. It will happen!' he wrote.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not confirm whether any negotiations with the U.S. were underway.
'It seems to me that the actions of the U.S. do not reflect a genuine willingness to engage in serious dialogue,' ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular briefing in Beijing. 'If the U.S. truly wants to talk, it should demonstrate an attitude of equality, mutual respect and reciprocity.'
The Trump administration says that menial jobs would be automated in revived U.S. factories, and that Americans working in them would be doing higher-level tasks.
'Our high-school-educated Americans — the core to our workforce — is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday on CBS News' 'Face the Nation.'