An irony of the Trump administration's mission to revive industrial production within the US is that much of the machinery required to make America great again comes from the country that motivated America's industrial revival in the first place. China now accounts for more than half of the world's new factory robot installations annually. Chen thinks Chinese and American engineers are comparable in skill and talent. "The difference is really just cost and speed, and how many people you can throw at a problem – we might have 1,000 who can do this work, and they might have 100," he said.
Chen and I walked to the end of the warehouse, where we now had a frontal view of the GM truck. After watching Jack work for a bit, Chen pointed me to the robotic arms on each side of the car body: "You see those? This is the screwdriving robot. Even if manufacturing does come back to North America, they won't be putting workers on the line to fasten screws any more. They'll use robots."
I wasn't so sure. Wasn't one reason that Americans elected Trump because they wanted their blue-collar jobs back? Chen thought this was pure illusion. The world had changed, and so had young people. Chen told me to think about China, where factory culture is deeply ingrained but young Chinese are increasingly reluctant to tolerate the drudgery. "It's just how people are wired now." If even Chinese people aren't willing to do factory work any more, Chen was saying, why would Americans?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/19/inside-chinas-robotics-revolution
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