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“For the architect now to tear it all down so quickly… irrespective of what happens from here on, I think it’s already been a very dramatic set of events that has no parallel in recent times,” said Jayant Menon, a research fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute who previously served as lead economist at the Asian Development Bank.

Still, Menon was stunned to see the role reversal between China and the U.S., especially as Xi stressed the importance of openness and rules-based order and multilateralism.

“The U.S. is exporting a lot of high-value services: software, Hollywood, banking — that’s where the future lies,” said Jayant Menon, a senior fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore who previously served as lead economist at the Asian Development Bank.

“The workforce is not keen to go back to the kinds of industries that have left the U.S. for other countries,” Menon said, citing factories in Cambodia where workers produce garments and footwear.

“They’re not really sweatshops, but they’re as close as you can get to them,” Menon said.