--- title: "Fully Cutting the US Off From China Would Cost $13.7 Trillion, EY Estimates" description: "Untangling the US economy from China would take roughly $13.7 trillion of investment over 25 years, and still might not fully work, according to a new analysis from consultancy EY-Parthenon. Add Europe and the UK, and the bill for the West reaches about $23.6 trillion. The numbers are a projection, not a forecast, but they put a price on a policy goal." category: "Economy" category_url: https://boursel.com/category/economy author: "Daniel Okonkwo" published: 2026-07-16T16:33:00.000Z updated: 2026-07-16T16:33:00.000Z canonical: https://boursel.com/article/fully-cutting-the-us-off-from-china-would-cost-13-7-trillion-ey-estimates tags: ["china", "trade", "decoupling", "tariffs", "supply-chains"] --- # Fully Cutting the US Off From China Would Cost $13.7 Trillion, EY Estimates Untangling the US economy from China would take roughly $13.7 trillion of investment over 25 years, and still might not fully work, according to a new analysis from consultancy EY-Parthenon. Add Europe and the UK, and the bill for the West reaches about $23.6 trillion. The numbers are a projection, not a forecast, but they put a price on a policy goal. Putting a number on "decoupling" from China tends to be where the idea meets reality. A new analysis from EY-Parthenon, the strategy arm of the consultancy EY, tries to do exactly that, and the figure is large. Weaning the US economy off Chinese manufacturing and supply chains would require [about $13.7 trillion of investment over roughly 25 years, and even then full separation may not be achievable, according to the analysis as reported by Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/07/16/us-europe-decoupling-china-cost-14-trillion-ey-parthenon-trump-tariffs/). Include Europe and the UK and the combined cost for the West rises to around $23.6 trillion. These are modeled estimates built on assumptions, not established facts, and Boursel presents them as one firm's analysis of a scenario, not a prediction of what will happen. ## What "decoupling" means "Decoupling" is the idea of sharply reducing an economy's dependence on another, here, the US and its allies cutting reliance on China for manufacturing, components and raw materials. It is often contrasted with "de-risking," a narrower goal of reducing vulnerability in a few critical areas, such as semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and defense materials, while continuing to trade normally in everything else. The distinction matters because, as EY-Parthenon's numbers suggest, the two carry very different price tags. ## Where the cost comes from The spending would go toward rebuilding domestic capacity that has migrated to China over decades: factories, mining and processing, power and infrastructure, and the trained workforce to run them. [Manufacturing, mining and utilities account for the bulk of the total, and the annual US investment implied, on the order of $550 billion, is comparable to what big US technology firms have been spending on data centers, per Fortune's account of the report](https://fortune.com/2026/07/16/us-europe-decoupling-china-cost-14-trillion-ey-parthenon-trump-tariffs/). By that framing the sums are large but not unimaginable; the harder obstacle is not the money. ## Why money alone may not do it China's advantage is no longer mainly cheap labor; it is the density and scale of its industrial ecosystem, suppliers, parts makers and skilled workers clustered together, built up over many years. EY-Parthenon estimates Chinese goods can be priced well below Western equivalents as a result, so replacing that capacity would [raise US consumer and producer prices by an estimated 1% to 2%, with a larger effect in Europe, according to the analysis](https://fortune.com/2026/07/16/us-europe-decoupling-china-cost-14-trillion-ey-parthenon-trump-tariffs/). And some chokepoints, such as rare-earth processing and certain pharmaceutical ingredients, are so concentrated in China that they cannot be duplicated quickly at any price. That is why the report concludes full decoupling is unrealistic in any near timeframe, while targeted de-risking in genuinely critical sectors is more feasible. ## Why it matters The estimate lands amid an active push, through tariffs and industrial subsidies, to reshore critical supply chains and reduce reliance on China. The value of an analysis like this is less in the precise dollar figure, which depends heavily on its assumptions, than in the trade-off it frames: greater supply-chain security and resilience on one side, and substantial investment plus somewhat higher prices on the other. Reasonable people weigh that balance differently, and the report itself points toward prioritizing the sectors where dependence is most dangerous rather than attempting a wholesale break. Boursel takes no view on the policy; the useful part is seeing the cost stated plainly. ## Sources - [US-Europe decoupling from China would cost $14 trillion, EY warns](https://fortune.com/2026/07/16/us-europe-decoupling-china-cost-14-trillion-ey-parthenon-trump-tariffs/)