Apple Not Allowed To Open Stores In India (reuters.com) 242
ffkom writes: Reuters reports: "India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters. A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, which states 30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India. However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter." Now just imagine what Apple stores in the U.S. would look like if 30% of their offerings had to be made in the US... "They did ask for a waiver but didn't provide any material on record to justify it. The decision was taken only after a thorough examination of their application," the source said. Apple planned to open at least three stores in India by the end of 2017. Separate sources said Apple talked with the Indian government about a relaxation of the rule before it filed an application to open stores in the country in January. In a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled), one of India's government officials said, "We are sticking to the old policy. We want local sourcing for job creation. You can't have a situation where people view India only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here." Currently, Apple sells its products "through a network of Indian-owned distribution companies and retailers."
Indian bureaucrats looking for a payday (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple will open its wallet and everything will change. Indian bureaucrats and officials care about one thing: bribe money.
Took the words right out of my mouth. I read the phrase in the description "The decision was taken only after a thorough examination of their application," the source said." to mean "Someone didn't get their kickback".
Re:Indian bureaucrats looking for a payday (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but Apple's got the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act) to worry about. They /can't/ pay bribes.
FCPA? Speaking Fees! (Score:2)
So Apple can just hire some properly placed officials to speak about something, and pay a nice speaking fee, like $225k US. Since the US doesn't consider speaking fees to be bribes for its officials, it should be OK for US companies too, right?
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Works for Hillary and Bill - should be fine.
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(Hence my example of $225k, which is apparently Hillary's most common ask / "what they offered" fee...)
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I can't believe this kind of idiotic remark gets a 5 rating.
For this permission, Apple had to deal with the highest echelons of the Indian government, which in the last two years has been fully cleaned up by the new PM and his team.
Broad brush remarks like this need to be voted down, not up!
Jingoism and Nativism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, just like the protectionism of the Florida sugar growers led to corn syrup in everything and protectionism of steel led to both heavy industry moving offshore and a steel industry that failed to innovate.
It happens a lot, even where you are sitting, is often stupid and can have unintended consequences.
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
You are ignoring the fact that India was colonized and used as nothing but as a market for centuries and sucked dry. Those scars will take a long while to heal and those are lessons not easily forgotten. The word "Free Trade" has a different meaning to an Indian (as well as to those who also endured the Opium Wars and the Black Ships incident in their history). They had completely different experiences with it in their history. This is a rational strategy from those experiences.
Likewise the idea of protectionism has cold war era connotations in US; not so in India. It was a necessarily strategy for India to protect itself from neo-colonialism when its capacity to compete was never allowed to mature. India started rolling back these defenses (which naturally hold back growth - security vs. speed) gradually once it felt its industries and services are maturing and have a chance to actually compete in a free market. But that is a gradual process rather than a binary choice.
> Why should the people of one country be privileged over the people of any other? Just because they were born there?
That said, I generally agree with the sentiment. But even the majority in US don't agree with that.
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
> sucked dry
The only thing sucking India dry is the corruption, where one looks to go into government so one can earn a nice life demanding kickbacks.
This puts the brakes on economic development as surely as mafia kickbacks, warlordism, and kings demanding cuts and permission to do anything does.
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Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be an idiot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.isro.gov.in/ [isro.gov.in]
https://www.powergridindia.com... [powergridindia.com]
The nice thing about india is: the official language is english. So even you can Google and inform yourself.
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But sure, I imagine there are some Indian politicians using your colonialist doublespeak to hide their shenanigans.
Boeing (Score:2)
The US govt does this all the time. When Airbus wanted to sell tankers they had to build a factory in the US and give 70% of the value to US subcontractors including their direct competitor Boeing
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The US govt does this all the time.
So that makes it ok? Let me introduce you to the tu quoque [wikipedia.org] fallacy.
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Cmon! Start voting to allow free movement of ALL goods, including Labor! Open the gates, let me in!
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Under British Colonialism the local Excise tax on goods produced in country was higher than the customs tax on goods produced in Britain. This drove Indian industries out of business. India had already started on the Industrial revolution when the English came. In some technologies like rockets it was actually ahead of Europe. It was by selling luxury baubles(the 16th century equivalent of iPhones) to Kings that the English got the Kings to allow them preferential access so as to destroy the local industry.
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Because its their country? Who else is going to defend the rights of people who share a geographical area and what the fuck is the point of being part of a society (e.g. nation) if it won't specifically look after its members?
More specifically - why should Indians or anyone else think globally without thinking locally first? To me it just sounds like a mantra spewed out by those with other agendas. Honestly, fuck global until all people have complete and unlimited access to all markets - job markets, housin
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You have it somehow reversed!
Why should people (companies) from the mighty imperialistic empire of the United States have the priviledge to stumb over all business all over the world?
And if they can not by normal means they lobby trade agreements like TIPP etc.
Regarding a company that sells electronics, I have no idea how much sense that rule makes. But for clothing, food and consumer goods, it certainly makes sense.
Developing and third world countries are already messed up enough by hostile economic activi
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Informative)
The same thought logically extends to "why should any person be privileged over any other?", in which case you're a bad person if you're living above subsistence level, because there are always others with less and you should forgo your own well-being because helping those less fortunate is more important.
I expect my government to do that which is in my country's best interests, and I expect other countries' governments to similarly look after their own citizens. If they happen to coincide to benefit both of us, great. If not, I expect my country's benefit to be of prime importance. You can call me "jingoistic and nativistic" all you want.
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Nice in theory, not in practice. If you want free movement of goods, you should also allow free movement of labor - after all, as per capitalist theory, labor is also a good. Wanna open up your borders completely then? Fight against millions of hungry, aggressive, undercutting Indians and Chinese for your job? If you ain't willing to have free movement of labor, don't talk about free movement of goods.
The US, till fairly recently used to have tariff walls that were a mile high. And even today, as someone el
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
The usual answer is a blunt "comparative advantage" or "economists have shown protectionism is bad", which, such as it is, basically implies you or the person arguing with you is too dumb to understand, thus fall back to buzzwords. Let's go with a more complete explanation.
Let's say a producer in Maine can produce 8 tonnes of potato per acre, and 2 tonnes of melon per acre. A producer in Mexico can produce 8 tonnes of melon per acre, and 2 tonnes of potato per acre. The farm management techniques are similar, and so the costs are basically the same per acreage; thus melon costs 4 times as much to produce in Maine, and potato costs 4 times as much to produce in Mexico.
So the guys in Maine normally produce potato for $100/tonne and melon for $400/tonne using 5 acres of land for 8 tonnes of each; while the guys in Mexico produce melon for $100/tonne and potato for $400/tonne using 5 acres of land for 8 tonnes of each. That's a lot of wasted money (read: human labor time) and land.
So the guys in Maine instead produce 16 tonnes of potato on 2 acres of land at a price of $100/tonne; the guys in Mexico produce 16 tonnes of melon on 2 acres of land at a price of $100/tonne. It costs about $1,000 to ship 30 tonnes of freight, so these people trade and Mexico ends up with potato at $133/tonne, while Maine ends up with Melon at $133/tonne.
Each side now has 60% of the land involved in producing 8 tonnes each potato and melon, and has reclaimed 60% of the labor (unemployment). As well, there is $66 per tonne or approximately 75% of the money unspent by the consumer base purchasing these products.
Most people miss this next part.
With that additional money, the consumers can now buy more products--including foreign imports, recycling the above process. Those products must be moved (shipping), accounted for (logistics), distributed (warehousing), and sold (retail), meaning the supply chain of melons, jeans, or cheap mechanical pencils creates a *lot* of local jobs (your local WalMart has a district manager under a regional manager; it has regional warehouses to stage goods for distribution across the district; and of course all those stores and the inventory, security, management, and service employees), paid for by the money saved via importing.
In short: the labor freed up from the farm is repurposed. Maybe we start a manufacturing base (this happened after America's labor force started using intensive farming techniques and machines, cutting from 90% of the work force to today's ~2%). Maybe that gets shipped to China and we make more doctors and stuff like Netflix and cell phone networks. Maybe we just make more food. In any case, for the same labor and the same number of jobs, we end up with MORE STUFF.
You might also notice: food is suddenly cheaper, since we're making 2.5 times as much for the same cost investment. Imagine it takes half the labor to produce all the goods you currently consumer--that means half the wages paid down the whole stack (right down to the coal miners), thus the same profit margins at half the PRICE. Your money can buy twice as much, so long as your wages aren't slashed, right? In this case, we haven't slashed hourly wages; we've slashed number of hours required to make a thing: one guy working for $10/hr still works 40 hours, and the other guy goes to do some other job; the things they both make cost half as much, and you can buy both of them, and support both their salaries.
So you ask:
How is "thinking globally" going to help me, Joe Random Small Person?
Globalization increases wealth and creates jobs. I've done some *weak* analysis on a scenario in which the United States blockades China and brings all manufacture back to the U.S., and the result is people become *much* poorer on an individual basis (the people making Comcast High Speed Internet, T-Mobile's 4G network, and Netflix need to stop doing that and go work in these factories--we don't have the labor for
The cost of structural unemployment (Score:2)
Each side [...] has reclaimed 60% of the labor (unemployment). [...] With that additional money, the consumers can now buy more products
If you're unemployed, you can buy zero products. You try to cover that:
In short: the labor freed up from the farm is repurposed. [...] we make more doctors and stuff like Netflix and cell phone networks.
These are also more highly skilled professions, for which most of "the labor freed up from the farm" is likely unqualified. Who covers the cost of retraining?
Re:The cost of structural unemployment (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're unemployed, you can buy zero products.
Correct. This is why the steady growth of technology across the past 200 years in America has supplied vast wealth with 4%-10% unemployment rates, while sharp steps forward in technology without uncorking any form of scarcity (e.g. the Industrial Revolution; automating every task at all McDonalds; self-driving cars) have caused history's greatest economic collapses.
To be short and imprecise: technical progress causes transitional unemployment, and an economy is kept healthy by maximizing the rate of re-employment and stretching out the rate of transition to labor-reducing methods; this is optimally performed by keeping workers competitive with the technology which replaces them and highly-employable. The most effective way to keep workers highly-employable is to minimize their proportional wage-labor cost; technical progress tends to do that, as one employee's time handles the task of several employees thanks to new technology, thus that employee's wages are divided more finely across more units of product. Basic income schemes such as a Citizen's Dividend, tax plans which reduce payroll and sales taxes, and progressive taxes which reduce working-class taxes as the income gap widens address both ends of the equation.
These are also more highly skilled professions, for which most of "the labor freed up from the farm" is likely unqualified. Who covers the cost of retraining?
This is not entirely true for two reasons.
First, we're exchanging numbers. A healthy economy has 4%-8% unemployment in the labor force; low unemployment leads to labor shortages (which staggers the economy), and high unemployment reduces the consumer base. If you unemploy 0.2% of your labor force during one year, then the new jobs may very well go to some of the other 4% or so who are already unemployed. In the United States, unemployment insurance only pays for 6 months, which means our social safety net relies on continuously exchanging out workers onto the unemployment line and bringing in other workers who were previously receiving unemployment aid (my Citizen's Dividend addresses this directly, because it's a reasonable policy, but a sub-optimal one; unemployment limits are negative punishment for not getting a job, while a Citizen's Dividend converts this to positive reinforcement by eliminating the negative punishment associated with *losing* your unemployment payment when you do get hired, thus any employment *only* makes you more wealthy).
This, plus the nature of changing markets and a constantly-developing workforce, means the workforce training occurring among new labor market entrants (college students) changes to follow the changing technology trends, and so the retraining you cite is somewhat integrated. Again: you probably don't want to eliminate 5% of jobs in 2-3 years; that's a pretty high turn-over rate, and the economy won't often create new jobs that quickly (the Information Age was a highly-complex example).
Second, much of the labor isn't highly-skilled labor. We've created a lot of blunt customer service jobs, truck loading/unloading jobs, cashier operators, and the like. Part of our growth is more grocery baggers and burger flippers; and we will necessarily want to replace our highly-skilled industrial machine operators with whatever moron can babysit a nearly-self-operating machine designed to be operated by whatever moron you can pull off the street. Look at most network software and hardware now: I could teach a completely computer-illiterate idiot to install Ubuntu and load arbitrary Web applications (OwnCloud, Gitlab, Wordpress, etc.) in maybe an hour; and the curious and persistent could figure it out on their own in half a day. My job as a skilled computer systems technician and engineer has become roughly equivalent to burger flipping.
So we get a major growth in retail, shipping, and other low-skilled labor, while our skilled professional
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the workforce training occurring among new labor market entrants (college students) changes to follow the changing technology trends
So who pays for a worker who becomes unemployed to go back to college to retrain for a new job? And what ensures that employers won't age discriminate against older college graduates who have finished their retraining in favor of 23-year-olds who had proceeded directly from high school to college?
Part of our growth is more grocery baggers and burger flippers
The former is being automated. Amazon has displaced Best Buy and many other sellers of durable goods, and some grocery stores, such as the Kroger store on West State Blvd in Fort Wayne, Indiana, close all non-self-
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So who pays for a worker who becomes unemployed to go back to college to retrain for a new job?
We don't.
There's 5.6% UE4 unemployment--UE3 (competitive job market) plus people who are discouraged (have given up competing). Creating a 5% increase in unemployment *seriously* injures your economy (see: the Great Recession of 2008). If you knock 0.1% of people out of their jobs, there's 50 other long-standing unemployed people for every 1 who has been made unemployed.
In other words: we're training new steel workers as our demand for ships slows and our demand for rail transit grows. 10,000,000
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First, the benefits of free trade seem to go to the wealthy, not workers, for as of yet unknown reasons.
It's more that the benefits are weighted upward. That is to say: when the nation becomes 10% richer, the working class gets 8% of that, and the upper class gets 2%; but the upper class is the top 10%, so they, as a collective, get twice the proportion. Every one of us gets the ability to buy a car, they each get the ability to buy two cars.
This behavior makes progressive taxes possible and useful [wordpress.com].
Second, comparative advantage removes diversification: you become a few- or one-product country, creating risk.
And it gives you access to things you otherwise wouldn't have at all, as well as higher degrees of wealt
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Many would rather have respectable jobs over prettier GUI's.
Dignity and an empty sack are worth the sack.
Especially young adult males: if you don't find them a job and respect, they'll riot, rape, rob, and war. It's how they are wired.
You mean if they don't have an income to support themselves and their families, and thus feel threatened because of scarcity--food is hard to come by, medical care is expensive, etc. You know, the things globalization and the growth of wealth among the middle- and lower-classes have provided.
You will have riots in the streets when your people are poor, starving, and desperate; they'll *always* wax romantic about how they're somehow better than their lot in l
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, artificially inflating the price of the product that's being dumped into your country at a price that would eliminate competition and thus local jobs is the point.
Prove that all foreign goods are "best" products. Go on. What good is the "best" product anyway if no one in your country can afford it because they don't have jobs?
When the day comes that an Indian, American, European or Chinese laborer can work for the same wage and pay the same cost of living anywhere on the planet, then we can all be happy global citizens. Until then, when you live in a country with an economic disadvantage your government should do what it can to balance that disadvantage.
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...that brainwashes people to believe somehow the people in the country you belong to are more important than anyone else
And it is, to me, and where you live should be to you. The economy somewhere else is of little consequence to me when the economy around me is falling apart. So what if making stuff locally costs a bit more? When everyone has jobs and money is moving around it doesn't matter. It's not like apple sell their wares for cost + a reasonable profit, no they get their stuff made as cheaply as possible then jack the price up to literally the highest they can get away with and pocket the difference. Would you not p
Re:Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Argentina. We tried this experiment over the past 12 years. You know what happened? We still got imported products, by a company that hired people to put these products in a box and slap a "INDUSTRIA ARGENTINA" sticker on them. And charging 300% more than what the same product costs outside the country.
Protectionism is also abused by those protected by it, to keep the status quo.
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Protectionism helps industry. But what if there is no internal industry, or if its a high tech field which nobody wants to touch because of the entry barrier?
Phones and computers, things that are insanely highsourced, isn't insourced.
Basically:
-Entry level SOC is insourced
-Mid to high level modern CPU isn't
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> 1. The global economy is a real thing, not a "trick phrase".
It'll stop being one as soon as people are allowed to move as freely as corporations (people are corporations too, right?) wares and money (real and fake).
Sure, if the corporation doesn't have any assets, then movement is trivial. But once it does. then moving people becomes easier. There seems to be this magic thinking that it just takes $40 to electronically wire some factory to another country.
Re: Jingoism and Nativism (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I'm not sure what a "good lying job" is, but ... solution my ass. India is a huge exporter and makes lots of money out of selling things overseas, but they don't want imported goods sold in their own country? If other countries adopted this kind of measure, India would suffer more than most countries.
Where did it say they don't want imported goods. What I read was if a foreign company wants to set up shop 30% of value of the goods needs to be made in india. Seems fair enough to me, as it stands every apple store has almost 100% of the value of products made in china.
Why do you think it's ok to abuse the shit out the world like that? These guys over here will work for nothing so we can slave them, then take the product and sell it for way way more than it cost to make over to these guys who have lots of money (but not for long because all the jobs are being fucked off overseas because it cheaper.) Meanwhile we're taking in all the money from underpaying and overcharging. If you really want a global market then a person in chinatown, china needs to get paid the same as a person in bumsville, usa or ruskigrad, russia etc and the product should cost the same no matter where you go. But they don't do they? They abuse the system from all sides making their huge pile of money huger and by extension making everyone else poorer. Fuck this so called 'globalism'.
Re: Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Insightful)
So allowing a shop to sell 70% of imported goods can be considered as not wanting imported goods. Right.
Re: Jingoism and Nativism (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Yes it can. Because that means you can't have a shop that really specializes in imported goods: you're burdening the shop operator with a responsibility to find local goods, stock them, sell them, keep track of exactly the amount sold of both, and stop selling the imported goods if the local goods aren't doing well enough (so unless you want to turn people away from time to time you'll need to maintain a decent safety margin). It rules out entire classes of very effective, proven business models (like the Apple store, or really anything you'd find in a mall that is focused on a certain brand. Swatch. Tumi. Banana Republic. Hugo Boss.)
Retail operations cost money. Tacking on a 30%-local-goods operation isn't going to be straightforward for many businesses, and ensures that only the largest players operating at scale are going to be entering the market. A straight-up punitive tariff might be less harmful for many businesses.
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There is nothing in the law against selling fully imported good or even selling only fully imported goods. However, fully imported goods will attract a duty which is much higher than what good which are assembled locally will receive even if all or most of the parts are imported from abroad.
For example, in the case of vehicles, if they are brought into the country as parts (completely knocked down (CKD)), they will attract much less duty than if they were imported in fully assembled (completely built units
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So allowing a shop to sell 70% of imported goods can be considered as not wanting imported goods. Right.
Every one of yinzers got it wrong. This problem will disappear once Apple gives the Indian Guvmint 30 percent of their gross.
Wouldn't it be interesting Apple staffed the stores with a mix of people speaking the Indian language with a strong southern or Boston accent?
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you'll end up having rebels all the way from communists to Islamists.
What?
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you'll end up having rebels all the way from communists to Islamists.
What?
People with governmental systems vastly inferior to capitalism in providing quality of life for the average person will continue to kibitz over capitalism in bids for power.
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Because if there are multiple copies of industries in each nation (something globalists hate), then individuals within those nations can chose the occupation that maximizes their potential
This is mysticism. It relies on a spiritual superstition in which people are gifted by their deity to have certain special abilities over others.
Errm, solution already on the way? (Score:5, Interesting)
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And it will probably be staffed by robots, which means that there won't be many extra jobs for the local people. There will be a few jobs during construction, and then the factory will be mostly automated.
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And it will probably be staffed by robots, which means that there won't be many extra jobs for the local people. There will be a few jobs during construction, and then the factory will be mostly automated.
So?
Rule 1 of Law Making: If you make laws to achieve something, make fucking sure that the letter of the law says that what you want to achieve should be done. Don't write it so the invisible hand takes care of it, because that's not how it fucking works.
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And it will probably be staffed by robots, which means that there won't be many extra jobs for the local people. There will be a few jobs during construction, and then the factory will be mostly automated.
And is Apple supposed to open a robot factory in every country it sells in? The whole point of a common market is trade between nations is a benefit to all.
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No they don't. There is not a single apple store in India. All are third party retailers selling iCrap. Often the same store will sell you non-apple crap too. Compare that to the thousands of Samsung Stores and Sony Worlds, selling crap only from their brand. That's because Sony's TVs and Samsungs latest flagships all have the mark "Manufactured in India" on them.
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This may work as after all people who buy Apple products are those who value form over function and a cool incense burning Hippie culture fits in with the Mac culture.
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Unless the incense is priced similar to the iShit devices, this won't work.
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That is exactly what they wanted. Similar practices are also common in Brazil, but here they usually go for heavy taxes for imported goods. If they make x% of the parts here, import the rest and put it together here the taxes are much lower.
Problem is (Score:5, Funny)
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They didn't do the needful.
No problem.
Emperor's new clothes (Score:3)
Finally a govt has called out what everyone has known. Apple's products are not technologically cutting edge hence not eligible for the waiver.
Much more advanced Android phones are manufactured in India so their is nothing preventing Apple from manufacturing in India.
Apple is anyway known for taking technology invented by others and repackaging it in beauitful formats.
Its the same technologically as a marketing firm (you can know a company' core capabilities by seeing who has status - at Google its the Engi
Hypocrites (Score:3)
They want the upsides of open trade, such as H1B wages flowing back to India and offshore outsourcing setting up shop, but NOT the downsides, such as allowing foreign products in that may reduce local jobs. This frustrates Americans to no end.
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Yeah, fuck them, play by our rules damn you! You can't just invent shit that benefits your country and keeps others from ripping you off. We patented that!
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I've never seen as many straw men in one place in all my life as there are in this article.
Nobody has said anything about not allowing foreign products in. They are already selling as many iphones as they want. Just not in Apple stores.
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Oh yeah, that is something that you'll get past corporations (like, say, Apple).
And India was doing so well (Score:2)
Imagine this in the US (Score:2)
Stores being required to sell 30% domestic crap.
99% of the stores would have to close shop. Including car dealerships.
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Stores being required to sell 30% domestic crap.
99% of the stores would have to close shop. Including car dealerships.
As opposed to 100% foreign crap? According to a quick google search India produced over 4 million cars last year (http://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/). It doesn't say they have to be Indian things just made in India. All apple would need to do is open a factory to make 30% of iphones sold in India. Except apple don't make things they pay others bottom dollar to make it as cheap as possible and I guess India isn't cheap enough.
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99% of the stores would have to close shop. Including car dealerships.
Way less than 99% of the car dealerships would close, because even many "foreign" cars are actually built right here in the USA. It's important to know this, because what you really want is a car built in Japan or Germany so that it doesn't fucking suck.
Shortsighted? (Score:4, Interesting)
I already have seen the comments below, crying mordio about how that hurts the indian economics. ... I see no difference in that law to the american 'cars can only be sold by dealers' and other 'stupid' laws.
Sorry guys, no idea
Can't be so hard for Apple to sell Displays and Hard-Drives etc. from Indian origin or simply add an entertainment section and sell Bollywood DVDs. Also as Apple usually gives discounts to Students, it would surely be a lever to point that out to the local government.
However, it is shortsighted because in my (limited) experience Apple Stores are stores with an incredible huge staffing. You never wait in a line at a cashier, or wait for a personal answering questions. Usually the next closest staff person comes and helps you with questions and bills you right away. You just give him the credit card, he puts it into a small device or makes a photo with his iPhone. If you already are a customer, nothing more is to be done (iTunes or Apple), he asks if you want a bill, if yes, via post or eMail, and thats it.
You only need to go to a cashier if you want to pay cash or with special European cards (EC, Maestro etc.)
You basically go to a shelf, take your stuff and leave.
The Apple Shop in Paris at the Lovre easily has over 50 sales staff. And that means with 16 business hours something like 100 + a bit of management etc.
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I think the problem is that it seems from reading the article that "30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India". That means even if 30% of the items they stock are made in India, there's a chance that they might not meet the quota if nobody buys those products. If only 30% of the products in the store had to be made in India, it would be trivially easy to get around it by offering for sale a single high priced item that was equivalent to 30%, even if nobody bought it. You ca
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> I see no difference in that law to the american 'cars
> can only be sold by dealers' and other 'stupid' laws.
Neither do I. But, if you will recall, the car dealership protectionism laws are also nearly universally reviled; not just here on slashdot, but by pretty much anyone who's had the displeasure of doing business with their ilk.
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However, it is shortsighted because in my (limited) experience Apple Stores are stores with an incredible huge staffing. You never wait in a line at a cashier, or wait for a personal answering questions. [...] And that means with 16 business hours something like 100 + a bit of management etc.
While a grand total of three stores wouldn't matter even in much smaller countries, here we're talking about a country with almost 1.3 billion people. What do you think would be better for the Indian economy as a whole? having 2-300 cashier-like jobs or expanding the market share for local products?
If local products are competitive people will buy them, if local products are not competitive, forcing stores to sell 30% local products is not going to help one iota to boost and expand the market share of locally made goods. All it will do is motivate store owners to game the system somehow.
Actually, that is a pretty good rule (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:2)
How can you sell 30% locally sourced goods until you open up shop and see what people buy? I mean let's say Apple has for sale some accessory Indian made, maybe it would make up 30% of sales, who knows until you open your doors?
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Amazingly, even very rich companies like Apple do some research before they spend money opening a new store. They'll have an idea what sort of revenue a given store is expected to produce. As such, they have all the information they need to figure out what local products they'd need to make 30% of the new revenue total be locally produced. Alternatively, Apple could make a few products in India, and thus 100% of their revenue would be 'local' and so would offset a lot of the revenue from imports, again thou
What about Samsung, Sony, ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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None of them run retails stores. To answer your questions: anyone, yes, yes, yes, it just works, no.
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Sad to see that India hasn't fully thrown off the economic ignorance that stifled their growth from independence until the late 1980s. Protectionism is nearly as stupid as price controls.
-jcr
My personal favorite is the excuse above that currently pretty highly rated that claims that India was colonized and "sucked dry" - wah wah wah. Funny how Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have all prospered recently, to name but 3 countries all were industrialized in less time than India has been independent, but pity poor poor India and how it will suffer for apparently generations to come.
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So what's so hard (Score:2)
Apple opens a store that sells both China-made computers AND locally-made jewelry. I bet you could get people to buy Apple-themed jewelry. Make it an India exclusive and you'll have tons of people buying it just to export.
Re: Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
30% of the VALUE of goods sold. If it was just numbers they could stock a few hundred locally made iPhone covers to meet the rules
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Hate? Nah. They're actually decent in terms of quality and usability. What ticks me off is their use of patents and that increasingly form beats function.
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Every time I price out, e.g., a Lenovo Carbon X1, to match the specs of a Macbook Air; the Lenovo costs more.
False dichotomy. If you were to spec a Macbook to match the specs of a Lenovo, you would likewise end up with a more expensive product.
You're pre-supposing that the Macbook Air has the ultimate feature set which others should match.
Others may want features like built-in HDMI, clip-on batteries, separate mic and headphone ports, changeable batteries and or HDs, a three button touchpad, upgradeable RAM or docking stations. Only by disregarding such choices because the Macbook doesn't offer them can you do a
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The Carbon X1 costs more than the MBAir for similar configurations.
You still don't get it, do you? There is no similar configuration, because to configure something "similar", you have to disregard any features that's on the X1 but not on the Macbook Air. Which may be fine for you, but you're still comparing apples to oranges, and presupposing that what the X1 has that the Macbook Air doesn't can be disregarded when comparing similarity.
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30% BY VALUE.
And, be honest, what's the value of an "Apple Genius"?
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This is fine until you realize that "goods that cannot be produced in the country" includes crap that is patented the fuck out of and the patent owner just plainly refuses to produce it in your country.
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Good thing India has never seen fit to invalidate patents to produce items locally that can't be imported (or imported at a reasonable price), otherwise your comment might not make sense.
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30% by value.
You'd have to sell an awful lot of Indian junk just to justify the sale of a single pair of Apple headphones...
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So how are all the other stores already selling Apple stuff getting by?
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They know who to bribe. Duh.
Re: Good on Them (Score:2)
Those other stores aren't foreign owned and so don't have the same restriction.
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Because they are Indian.
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And Apple already has their products sold by third party retailers. This whole condition is only if it wants to open an exclusive apple store. Also, your apples analogy won't work because apples are much cheaper than the iShit Apple is peddling. No way they can account for 30% of the value of goods. Also, you must understand that Indian government is not that big of an idiot. Apple must comply with the spirit of the law, not just the letter.
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In the US it would be called a 'campaign contribution'
And Donald Trump / Bernie Sanders said (Score:3)
"You can't have a situation where people view The United States only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here."
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This is protectionism, and obviously done because Indian officials care more about their home country than neoliberal ideology. The rest of us should imitate them, quit the WTO, and start a new trade organization which doesn't require members to sacrifice their independence, future, and the wellbeing of their populations.
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... my how things have changed. Now IBM has more employees in India than any other country.