For many Chinese manufacturers, Trump’s return has added urgency to continuing plans to open factories or find partners in other countries.

Wide-ranging tariffs risk becoming “existential” for companies, says Edward Steiner of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, a law firm. For many, relocating production to America—Mr Trump’s desired outcome—remains prohibitively expensive.

President Donald Trump is eyeing a “25% or higher” tariff across all semiconductor chips the United States imports, with rates likely to “go very substantially higher over a course of a year,” he told reporters on Tuesday.