For nearly a decade, the United States has pursued a tariff strategy premised on a deceptively simple idea: raise the cost of Chinese goods, and American industry will fill the void. Instead, the arc of economic gravity has bent back toward China, as importers discovered that decades of accumulated infrastructure, scale, and supply chain mastery cannot be undone by policy alone. By mid-2026, the trade deficit with China approached historic highs, suggesting that the tools of economic nationalism had reshaped the map without changing the destination.