Following the Factory (China Plus One)
When manufacturing costs rise in one country, where does it actually go, and does it actually go anywhere at all?
Planned flagship report + interactive (30–40 pp + Interactive). When manufacturing costs rise in one country, where does it actually go, and does it actually go anywhere at all? This investigation is on the Atlas editorial roadmap; the draft has not yet been published. (Roadmap placeholder.)
An Atlas Interactive
When manufacturing costs rise in one country, where does it actually go, and does it actually go anywhere at all?
Drag the timeline. Switch between apparel and electronics. Click a country to see what moved, and why.
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2025 · Electronics · share of US imports
Node size encodes share of US imports, not a live trade index. Every figure is a US-market share, per the report's stated scope. Sourced 2025 anchors: China and Vietnam in both sectors, India's electronics share, Mexico's apparel share, and the five-supplier 44.2% apparel total. The remaining 2025 shares, including Bangladesh's and India's individual apparel splits, are estimates fitted within that sourced total and are marked 'est.' in their panels.
The 2010 baseline is stylized: China dominant, the other six minimal, and between the endpoints the motion is illustrative interpolation, not year-by-year data.
Malaysia and Thailand are deliberately outside this map's scope: a stated gap, not an oversight.
Seven countries are selectable — sized by their share of what America imports. Flip the sector and watch where the factory actually went.
Timeline
2025
Key Insights
The Divergence
Flip the toggle: apparel diversified aggressively within Asia (a record 73% of US apparel imports) while Mexico fell to 2.3%. The industry everyone assumed would nearshore first didn't.
Vietnam
Vietnam passed China twice in the same year: the #1 apparel supplier to the US, and past China in smartphone imports. The only country on this map that won both stories at once.
Mexico
Three true numbers, one finding: Chinese FDI down 80%, total FDI at a record $41bn, new greenfield at half its 2015–2022 average. Record capital is mostly reinvested earnings in existing plants, not new factories.
Indonesia
Eleven jailed Indigenous protesters and a contaminated bay are the near-term price of a nickel build-out whose own funder, China, is now moving to nickel-free batteries. The human bill arrived before the strategic one.
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The map shows where manufacturing moved. The report's closing section (Section 12, The Skeptic's Case) asks how much of this shift is real, and how much is relabeling.
Return to the written report →Continue Exploring