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- 🎯 China’s automation edge over US
🎯 China’s automation edge over US
China has 470 robots per 10K manufacturing employees vs. 295 in US
Welcome back to another issue of Trendline!
Tariff news refuses to die down and markets are swinging wildly after every Trump tweet. This is going to be a very long week. As always, we will cover a range of topics in this newsletter to keep you well informed about what matters.
1) China’s manufacturing industry is more automated than US: There is a lot of talk about China vs. US right now, esp. when it comes to manufacturing, so it is worth looking at some data.
According to international federation of robotics, the Chinese manufacturing industry has much higher degree of automation than US (South Korea is the most automated).
The federation tracks data on installed base of industrial robots for various applications and compares it across countries. Very telling chart below - China’s manufacturing isn’t just competing based on cheap labour but has high degree of automation, 3rd highest in the world and much higher than US.
For this data, Industrial robots are defined as: an “automatically controlled, reprogrammable multipurpose manipulator, programmable in three or more axes, which can be either fixed in place or fixed to a mobile platform for use in automation applications in an industrial environment”.
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I have been fascinated by US congress ’s stock picks (after all, they have access to information that most of us don’t). But it is not easy to find out what members of Congress are buying and when. That’s why I follow Market Intel, which does a neat job of summarizing top trades by members of US congress. You should follow it too.
2) ChatGPT rising rapidly: SimilarWeb’s March 2025 data reports that ChatGPT had 5.54 billion visits over mobile and desktop, the 6th highest in the world. Traffic has grown 16.5% MoM, almost twice as fast as that of X (former Twitter).
ChatGPT should reach #5th position soon in the ranking - it is a significant shift in how we access information on the internet (remember all the Top 5 sites, except google search is social media/content sites).
SimilarWeb
3) Economy in Chaos: President Trump’s tariff war has created more economic uncertainty than what was present at the peak of Covid-19 pandemic! Wild stuff. Markets hate uncertainty. Today’s news about a 90 day pause on reciprocal tariffs on most countries (except China) will give investors some respite - but news can change tomorrow again!
Financial Times
4) India now has 2nd largest number of online shoppers: India’s e-commerce market has been on a tear for over a decade now.
According to a new Bain report, the total market is ~$60 billion in 2024, with 270-280 million online shoppers, at par with US and 2nd highest in the world after China. Shoppers at grown at 20% CAGR for last 5 years - the highest among major markets.
As Indian GDP per capita rises over coming years, the market is expected to grow high double digit for foreseeable future. Here is the full report
Flipkart (owned by Walmart) and Amazon are the 2 largest online retailers competing for market share in India.
Bain
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