Nearshoring, Friend-shoring and China+1

For two decades the cheapest answer to "where should we make it?" was nearly always China, and from 2009 China was the largest single source of US goods imports, peaking at ~21.6% of them in 2017 (Congressional Research Service, reported). Since 2018 the answer has been rewritten by tariffs, a pandemic, a container-rate spike, forced-labour rules and wars. Section 301 duties on most Chinese goods (2018–19), the 2021–22 freight shock, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (presumption in force 21 Jun 2022) and the 2025–26 tariff sequence turned "China+1" from a hedge into a board-level programme. The trade data moved: Mexico overtook China as the largest source of US goods imports in 2023, supplied ~15.5% of them in 2024 and ranked first again in 2025 (CRS, reported), while China's share fell to ~9.4% in January–July 2025 and ~6.6% in January–February 2026 (Mexico News Daily on US data, reported; bases differ by source, verify against Census). Vietnam, India, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia gained too; Apple said most iPhones sold in the US in the June 2025 quarter would come from India. But much of the shift is re-routing rather than replacement: Chinese components and Chinese-owned factories moved into Vietnam, Mexico and Southeast Asia, which is why US policy turned to origin rules, transshipment enforcement and, in 2026, a broad Section 301 regime that taxes most trading partners (10% or 12.5% from 24 Jul 2026, reported, verify), and why Mexico itself raised tariffs of up to 50% on ~1,400 product lines from non-treaty countries such as China from 1 Jan 2026 (reported). The rules that make Mexico attractive are also less certain than they were: at the first USMCA joint review on 1 Jul 2026 the US declined to confirm a 16-year extension, which triggers annual reviews while the agreement stays in force to 2036 (law-firm alerts, reported). This section explains why companies move production, the destinations one by one (Vietnam, India, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and North Africa for Europe), USMCA and rules of origin, transshipment and origin enforcement, what the trade data do and do not show, the infrastructure (CPKC, border crossings, Monterrey's industrial parks, power and water), the real cost of a move (tooling, ramp-up, yield, duplicate inventory, management time) and how an experienced operator decides. Two companion files give a worked example of the NPV of moving a whole product line to Mexico and a nearshoring and origin-enforcement checklist.