The ‘Make America Great Again’ objective of bringing back manufacturing jobs to the US is an “illusion,” and foreign companies know that making in the US is not profitable, according to Kazuto Suzuki, Director of the think tank Institute of Geoeconomics and Professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, adding that Japan, South Korea, and others are not investing in manufacturing but in the energy sector.

In an interview with The Indian Express on the sidelines of the Kautilya Economic Conclave earlier this month, Suzuki also said the tariff war is a result of free trade, not Chinese overcapacity and there will be a “perpetual confrontation” between economic efficiency and sovereignty. Edited excerpts:

Is Chinese overcapacity the root cause of today’s tariffs and trade uncertainty?

The root cause is free trade, which allows shifts and restructuring of industry to more efficient and optimum supply-chain mechanisms.…