The suspect part had been sourced by a supplier in the VW supply chain and not by VW directly, it was claimed.
It came as Volkswagen was hit by additional claims from German media that it had benefitted from human rights abuses in China’s troubled Xinjiang region.
I understood his comment as the west chose to outsource a lot of manufacturing to Asia and now does not have the capability to do so locally anymore, i.e. destroyed that manufacturing capability.