1) Vietnam: Vietnam has benefited, however this has been on a fairly small scale. We haven't really seen much of an increase in manufacturing in Vietnam over the last few years, although like you said, we may not truly see the full effect for several years. As of now, however, it doesn't seem like Vietnam is poised to take over any significant portion of China's exports to the US. As your article states, despite the fact that Vietnam's output is fairly small, it is already running into bottlenecks such as labor shortages, which put them in a situation where they are facing a ceiling of sorts to their capacity to take over Chinese production.

Additionally, this is a continuation of a trend, as your quote states. Companies had already been migrating away from China, and will continue to do so as pay continues to increase in China and it continues to develop. You could argue that any substantial hit to China's economy may slow its ability to continue to provide better conditions for its workers, which may actually deter the natural processes which are already diversifying global manufacturing. You talk about a situation where China becomes the only global manufacturer, but I believe market forces and the natural growth of China would largely prevent that from happening.

As a bit of a side note, the goal of having China drastically step up its imports, may create issues in the diversification of the US' export supply chains. From Fortune.com:

"Basically it would divert almost the entire soybean crop we export to everybody to China," said John Scannapieco, chair of the global business team at law firm Baker Donelson. "We're shrinking our markets. We should be helping farmers to diversify."

As the trade war has shown, without sufficient diversification, producers risk of a sudden reduction of purchases, for whatever reason, which can be disastrous.

2) "Building bridges" explanation: What I mean when I say that the US should have undertaken the task of diversification by building bridges instead of burning them, is that the US should not have sought diversification by attacking the supply chains that existed (which did damage to the global economy as well as US importers, etc), but instead should have sought to develop relationships with areas such as India and Vietnam. Make deals with these countries and with US companies to remove barriers. Create a system of positive reinforcement, which could benefit US companies, benefit the global economy and aid in diversification, instead of creating a system of punishment.

3) Technology: I agree that this is a positive step, however, I see no reason to think that the trade war was necessary to reach this point. From Business Insider:

"Graham Webster, who leads a joint initiative between Stanford university and the think tank New America, focused on China's digital policy, said that Wednesday's deal brought good news regarding intellectual property protection. The pact commits China to crack down on the theft of American technology and corporate secrets by Chinese firms and state-owned organizations.

But this was a small concession for China, and in its own self-interest, Webster said. "The Chinese government was already on a trajectory of becoming more rule-based, and [implementing intellectual property rights] has become a matter of self-interest for the Chinese economy as its companies have become more advanced," he said."

The article goes on to talk about how much wasn't handled in this deal in regards to Huawei, AI, hacking and more.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-china-deal-tech-cold-war-rages-on-experts-2020-1

Overall, this is a change which may benefit China the same as it may benefit the US. I welcome it, but I don't think the trade war was necessary to reach a deal that benefits China.

4) Other countries: Why did we not undertake these ventures with the aid of our allies instead of hoping they would take these steps individually? There was no reason that the US had to go into this trade war alone, but instead of developing a global, targeted strategy with the weight of the world, we chose to strike out at everyone simultaneously, weakening our position and hurting our allies. Instead of focusing on attacking the EU for the past several years, the US should have brought them to the table as we had trade discussions with China. Again, this lack of strategy and cooperation I think hurt the US' position. I don't think any of the damage inflicted over the past several years would have been necessary if we simply worked with our allies instead of against them.

5) "Worst deal ever": I want to emphasize, that I am not claiming that this is the worst deal ever, as you seem to imply. I am stating that it is a good, albeit fairly minor deal. It will likely have positive effects. My issues are primarily with how we got here.

Interesting. I agree with you, but I didn't expect you to hold this perspective.

THis deal did not change anything.  Look, I have stated I had no problems with Trump trying to tackle China before, the problem was always his methods.  First and foremost he tried to showboat that he was going to force China to conform which is the dumbest political move period if anyone knows just a little bit about China.  You state other parties like Japan, EU etc but he never included them and he doesn't include them now going lone cowboy route.  Hell the TPP was one solution where everyone was trying to rein in China together but he pulled out.  There were already international plans to reign in China but since Trump never pay attention or read anything by time he infomed himself he already walked away.  Stop trying to give credit to something he was to simple minded to even understand was already in motion.  

The fact is that after turning down the same deal China offered many times he finally caved in.  He showed weakness as they now know he had to go with that deal because he had nothing to sell the American people because it's election time.  He gained nothing in getting China to change anything on how they do business and it really doesn't matter if you call it phase one or whatever because China has no need to ever do a phase 2. 

If Trump thought he could bring back manufacturing jobs back to American then he was a fool and did not listen to multiple experts on that manner or as any snake oil salesman you sell people on something you know will never happen.  

I agree that China definitely needs to be reign in but do I believe Trump and his administration is smart enough to make it happen, HELL NO.  If he really wanted to reign in China then he would have included the international countries who all deal with China to put real pressure on them no go it all alone believing that trade wars are easy and China will just cave in because we are the big US.  After this whole mess the trade deficit grew and only thing accomplished is that nothing.

I'll start by the usual disclaimer: I am no trade expert here, in fact, I only took an interest in the whole thing in 2019.

One of the few things that I read repeatedly is that the future of global trade will heavily revolve around bilateral agreements just as much as multilateral agreements. China & the US will have many of those on their tables in the future. The US can pinpoint common goals it shares with the EU/Japan/UK and get involved in multilateral talks as well as going on a one-on-one fight with China. I don't see the problem in bringing on other countries to achieve goals the USA can't achieve on its own. 

As for TPP, the most popular 3 politicians in 2016 ran against it, including Hillary Clinton. It seemed that the US wasn't gonna go forward with the deal regardless of who got elected. Fast forward to 2020, it looks like the democratic nominee has been opposing these sort of trade deals since his infancy, and he is running on a platform that vilifies trade deals because it results in the "outsourcing of American jobs". In other words, Americans are voting for candidates hoping that someone will handle trade deals differently. There is a communication gap between the policy makers & people, if you want to avoid this lash out against deals that are supposedly helping the country, policy makers need to spend a lot more time explaining why they're signing them. 

We obviously don't agree on everything but since it's hard to predict what's gonna happen next I suggest we revisit this conversation years from now if we're still around, we'll have more facts to deal with by then. 

1) "As a bit of a side note, the goal of having China drastically step up its imports, may create issues in the diversification of the US' export supply chains."

That's one aspect I didn't think of at all. It definitely raises the question if this is something the US actually benefits from, it doesn't look that positive when you put it like that. 

2) Can't disagree. 

3) Technology: I see where you're coming from. I read similar stuff as well over the past few days. As of now, it looks like China has become so technologically advanced that it's worried about its own set of original IPs and tech. Whatever damage the US is trying to prevent with this deal, has already happened. American officials are too late, now that China has transferred all the tech secrets to its own companies and built upon them, it's seeking to protecting its own advancement by implementing intellectual property laws. This is borderline hilarious, american tech giants were so blinded by sweatshops & maximizing profits they didn't think twice before going all out of their homelands and all in China. 

4) That's a valid question to ask but it seems that bilateral trade agreements are on the rise globally. Whether if that's for the better or the worse (at least for the US) remains to be seen. 

5) I didn't mean you personally. Partisan reporting and lack of bias free sources is frustrating. Your objection is valid, Trump could've gotten the same results differently, but I was trying to focus on the details of the deal itself and I did learn reading the stuff you linked which I was hoping to achieve by discussing it with someone with different views

Lawmakers: The US cannot afford another 10 years of Citizens United

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission unleashed a torrent of outside spending by corporations and wealthy donors who seized the opportunity to buy unlimited influence in Washington. The decision exponentially increased the amount of money in our politics and emboldened foreign actors to corrupt our elections. Our democracy has paid a heavy price.

Since the Citizens United decision, just 10 individuals have injected more than $1.2 billion into our elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Secret money groups have poured $963 million into ads without telling voters who paid for them. And Americans have no way of knowing how much foreign money has infiltrated our elections.

The Citizens United decision ceded unparalleled power to wealthy and well-connected special interests and diminished the voice of regular Americans, leaving people feeling left out and locked out of their own democracy. With millionaires, billionaires and corporations calling the shots in Washington, the American people get short shrift.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/21/opinions/citizens-united-decision-election-disaster-udall-sarbanes/index.html

Talk about legal meddling. 

That's why in some countries the government officials are not allowed to have any side income whatsoever and the bank accounts are under scrutiny. That way bribing or excessive lobbying is a whole lot more difficult to pull off.

I can think of a pretty easy solution to that. "Hey, pass this stuff for me, and I'll hire you as a board member for $1M a year after you are out of your position.".

That's something that's hard to avoid if there's only one person to influence for this. Thankfully, in most cases they would need to do this to a slew of people (at least one entire chamber that needs to be convinced), and the chances that one of them would tip them off to the authorities are far too great then to risk the legal and image problems that would ensue. Even more so if it's a coalition government and the wish goes against one of the parties in that coalition, even just trying to do that then could risk breaking up the government and new elections incoming, with a chance of losing the election and receiving nothing out of it.

Job Title: President of the United States.
Job Description: Sending out 18 Twitter posts per hour.
Education Requirements: Must have completed 3rd Grade Spelling and Grammar class with a D+ or higher. Must be able to read more than 10 words per minute.

I had better spelling and grammar in grade 3.