This is true, both cynically and literally. There have been many complete and partial defections recently as China swoops in with B&R foreign direct infrastructure and industrial investment.
The US needs to adjust with more competitive foreign economic policies because tariffs aren't it. All of those trillions wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq for diesel power plants to nowhere could've been sprinkled around the Global South to advance economic development resulting in greater wealth elsewhere able to afford American goods and services, source raw materials, and develop manufacturing relationship in various countries in, say, Africa... like China is doing.
