Natalie Kitroff

And that's because after years of careful planning, China has essentially made itself tariff-proof.

Today, my colleague Keith Bradshaw explains how, despite Trump's best efforts, China's robot-powered super factories are taking over the world.

It's Tuesday, March 24th.

Keith, it's been about one year of tariffs on China, one year of, I think it's fair to say, economic war on China.

A crazy year, honestly, which was capped off by a Supreme Court ruling saying many of these tariffs were illegal.

And what we're here to do today is figure out what did the last year amount to?

And you are here because you've been covering trade for approximately one billion years.

Is that right?

Okay, close to a billion.

And so what we want is for you to help us understand what these tariffs have wrought when it comes to China.

$1.2 trillion.

Just put that in context.

How big of a deal is that?

The upshot of what you're saying, Keith, is that the most aggressive tariffs against China in decades didn't really stop China from dominating in manufacturing.

Why?

What explains that?

Okay, just to spell this out, you're saying because China's factories are just so automated, the country's able to produce a ton of stuff, even advanced products, extremely cheaply, so cheaply that China has become almost immune to Trump's tariffs.

Okay, so I want to understand, what exactly does that automation inside China's factories look like?

Dark factory because humans aren't involved and robots don't need light to function.

So AI is doing quality control in this case?