No. They really aren’t comparable. Net exports don’t include something like say, Nvidia handing a design to TSMC which then sells it in China (technically, zero U.S. exports despite US firms obviously having substantial contributory value). Not is the “electronic integrated circuits” HS8542 as a proxy for “semiconductors” a good one; semi-processing in other countries when semis are put on PCBs and whatnot will often edge what are semiconductor exports into other tariff product likes such as “electronic assemblies” like HS8538.
IC manufacturing in China is heavily focused on legacy nodes/analog/discrete and in the U.S., it’s heavily focused on leading node logic. The U.S. has the far more productive tech stack here.
Northrop, Lockheed, and General Dynamics (Gulfstream) are not subcomponent manufacturers and do, indeed, manufacture final aircraft. But even if you compare final commercial aircraft sales, that would mean just COMAC compared to Boeing Commercial Aircraft. This of course, is not a prognostication of what things will be later, but since everyone will die eventually and lives today and has to make negotiations today, knowing the productivity differences today matters. Waiting an entire working lifetime for things to be maybe different in the future is not a winning strategy.
