Trump Tells Apple To Make Products In the US To Avoid China Tariffs (thehill.com) 568
hackingbear writes: President Trump acknowledged in a tweet that "Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China," but suggested the issue was not with the tariffs themselves. "There is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now," Trump wrote. The U.S. is threatening to impose 25% tariffs on all $500 billion worth of Chinese imports over issues such as intellectual property theft.
While Apple et al are still making their products in China, Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products, given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%. Manufacturers also need to compete in the labor market with garbage companies who need to find American laborers willing to recycle their own trash -- a job once imposed upon China as a condition to enter the World Trade Organization and enjoy advantageous tariff rates. China is gracefully giving back those jobs as the U.S. is complaining of unfair trades.
While Apple et al are still making their products in China, Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products, given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%. Manufacturers also need to compete in the labor market with garbage companies who need to find American laborers willing to recycle their own trash -- a job once imposed upon China as a condition to enter the World Trade Organization and enjoy advantageous tariff rates. China is gracefully giving back those jobs as the U.S. is complaining of unfair trades.
Or, they could buy them in Canada... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't there an 800$ tax/duty etc free limit on importing items from abroad? If they buy their iPhones from Canada, and the cost is under $800 US...
Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... (Score:2, Insightful)
More anti-Trump propaganda by the Arab-owned machine, Slashdot.
Unemployment isn't at 3.9% and never has been. It may still be 10% or 20% depending on the rampant redefinitions that have neen going on since the Obama era. Oh, if you haven't been able to find a job after a few months, obviously you have given up, so we aren't going to count you. It's just like faking the CPI to get the inflation rate number to be what they want it to be: it's a big con game.
And while we're on the topic of con
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You left out the biggest question in my mind...
"Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products"
Millions of laborers? Huh?
Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, could you have packed more trolling in a single post?
The best line was logistics. So we can manage to import phones and bring them to the heartland, where most of our food comes from, btw, but we are incapable of shipping phones out of those same places. But we can ship a gazillion tons of food out. Lololololol
Try again, son. A good effort, though.
Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... (Score:3, Interesting)
Has your country improved measurably since the reduction of union power from the 80s onwards?
Rock and hard place (Score:5, Informative)
Some electronics require rare earth materials to manufacture, which currently are sources from China or other countries. Those have export restrictions from China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , and they ask the products to be manufactured there.
US now asks products to be manufactured here, and will add additional taxes (tariffs) if this request is not complied with.
So Apple and other manufacturers are split between two bad choices. They will have to weigh which one is less worse, and go in that direction. In all cases it will most likely be the consumers that suffer.
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Funny)
Those rare earth materials are present in the USA. Trump is hard at work ripping up environmental regulations so that we can enjoy strip mining throughout America.
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So it is OK for the Chinese to strip mine for rare earth metals, and then build the Iphones with slave labor and then ship those Iphones overseas on Nigerian flagged vessels staffed with cheap labor from the Philippines to be consumed by snooty white liberals who hate racism, but If Americans mine for rare earth metals on American soil, and then build those Iphones in America using American labor, and then ship those phones on trucks driven by Americans to be sold to Americans who can afford to buy them bec
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Key word: "currently"
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, are you a time traveler from 2010? Because that's when it became clear that China couldn't leverage the rare earth monopoly. Rare earths are everywhere, and the China/Japan rare earth embargo in 2010 was immediately overcome by Japan, it did zero damage.
The two dollars worth of metals in a phone could double price and it wouldn't matter, not that they'd actually double as there are plenty of other suppliers. Now the actual chip & electronics manufacturing capabilities of China, combined with reasonable quality affordable staff, that's a lot harder to replace.
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the actual chip & electronics manufacturing capabilities of China, combined with reasonable quality affordable staff, that's a lot harder to replace.
Any manufacturing capability China has can be easily replicated in America, esp. by a company like Apple with their seemingly infinite financial resources, what can't be replicated here are low wages, lax environmental and worker protections.
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Informative)
Mines in California used to provide most of the world's rare earth metals. The ore is still there, the mine still works, and we have tons of the stuff. The mines have struggled with bankruptcy after being undercut by mines from China in the early 2000s.
Fundamentally, the problem is the subsidy of rare earth mining and use of environmentally irresponsible processing in China artificially lowering the price of the metals in China. The export ban was an effort to focus the advantage of those policies on down-stream manufacturing in China after crippling their biggest competition (mines in the US). In the article you linked, there's reference to recent US industry proposals that we do the exact same thing here, nationalizing and re-opening the California rare earth mines.
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The export ban was an effort to focus the advantage of those policies on down-stream manufacturing in China after crippling their biggest competition (mines in the US). In the article you linked, there's reference to recent US industry proposals that we do the exact same thing here, nationalizing and re-opening the California rare earth mines.
Molycorp was a private corporation. The nationalization you speak of was nothing more than smoke blowing out Trump's ass. Note that the Mountain Pass mine may indeed be reopened, and operated by its new Chinese owner after being bought out of the Molycorp bankruptcy. Yah, Trump really sticking it to China, impressive.
The Chinese embargo was quickly abandoned when it became clear that the effect would be to bring many marginal REE operations back online. Worse, and not fully anticipated by the Chinese strate
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Insightful)
One relevant criticism of the tariffs is the actual cost of work done of assembling the Apple product is a tiny faction of it's value. For a $2000 computer it might be less than $100.So taxing the full value can be considered unfair, as the conservatives always like to say.
What I find interesting is that lots of industries do not face such complications. For instance apparel can be sourced more easily that cars or electronics, and assembled in the USA. However, as simple as it is to make clothes in the USA, Trump and his family still chooses to make the clothes in Mexico and China.
So, as Trump chooses not manufacture in the US, and in fact regularly imports workers from other countries instead of hiring local workers, we can only assume that he knows, as president, something we do not. Like maybe US workers are inferior.
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Re: Rock and hard place (Score:2, Insightful)
Heaven forbid you have to pay for American workers and their disgusting demands of a living wage, safety regulations, and health care.
I'd happily save a few bucks if it only means a few dirty chink children die.
Re: Rock and hard place (Score:4, Insightful)
You have a point, but we could partly solve this by dropping the patent system (the average smartphone has over 250,000 patents covering it), then instead of obscene profits all going to a tiny handful of mega-wealthy shareholders, we could have products made in America that are also still affordable, as getting rid of the patents would cause a huge drop in the price of the products, which would (A) offset the increase that goes to paying a living wage to American workers and (B) help keep the products comparably affordable to said middle-class workers.
Re: Rock and hard place (Score:3)
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Perhaps because American workers aren't available in company dormitories to work on last minute changes to the iphone?
That is at least what Apple claimed when Obama asked Apple why they couldn't bring jobs back to the U.S. At least according to that bastion of conservative values the New York Times.
So the truth is that Apple likes being able to use slave labor to construct it's phones, because it's easy.
“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Informative)
Right. Just imagine what an iPhone would cost now if it was built with US labor wages and protections in factories with US (especially pre-Trump) environmental controls and protections.
One of the last, if not last, assemblers of TVs is closing because the tariffs on components has made it impossible to compete. Trump, as usual, has come up with a tweet worthy solution that is unworkable. A more likely solution wold be to ramp up production outside of China in non-tariff locations. Much of the actual value in the iPhone is made elsewhere and shipped to China, only final assembly is primarily done there. Until Apple manages to fully automate that it is still labor intensive which makes US manufacture expensive unless you do a WalMart; something I doubt Apple would do. One thing for certain, no matter what pple does Trump will declare victory and claim he has won biggly.
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.postandcourier.com... [postandcourier.com]
But the trade group heard about Element, and it bought a couple of sets. When they opened their boxes — draped with pictures of the American flag — they were startled to see “made in China” stamped on the back.
So in 2014, they filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing Element of misleading marketing. They described the company’s practices as “red, white and blue-washing,” since a product can’t be called “made in America” if its parts are all foreign.
Basically, they had the entire TV manufactured and assembled, then shipped to their South Carolina plant already in the box in which it would be sold. American workers opened the box, tested the TV to ensure that it worked, and packaged it back up. For this, they tried to imply on the packaging that it was made in the USA. And they also took government subsidies.
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is likely a labour shortage for the physical labour required.
Standing on feet all day, working with or around toxic materials. (Solder, lead, plastic-dust, etc)
Limited to no moderation in work-load, just work full speed until a mandated 15min break.
There is already a labour shortage in the farm-picking industries.
Many of the workers being illegal, or seasonal workers.
In California, there was a news report in the LA times last year about one farmer trying to hire Americans by paying $20/hr. Most qui
This is kind of hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
This leads to some crazy political theater. For one thing we've got economists trying to come up with excuses about why wages aren't climbing despite "full" employment. And now we've got Trump needing to explain to businesses where they'll get workers needed to run factories when on paper those workers already have jobs. I mean, I suppose Trump could argue that he'll do mass immigration. I'm sure that'll go over swell at his monthly rallies. [variety.com]
Re:This is kind of hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Tariffs are beyond idiotic as a solution to our economic issues and even if Trump does somehow manage to enact them, they're not going to survive beyond his presidency. We should be going in the opposite direction and removing all tariffs. If China or some other government wants to subsidize a local industry, let's import the hell out of those products. I'd be over the moon to get some other country's tax payers to foot the bill for the goods I purchase.
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It's a free market and therefore this is an easy answer: you pay them more than your competition to get superior workers.
This whole article is a dumb concept: there are not millions of workers at Apple's [third party] factories. There are thousands of workers though.
And do not confuse angst with illegal immigration with anti-immigration. Any person worth talking to is for immigration, but of people that will improve our country by bringing skills or ideas that improve it. Chances are, if you have no ethical
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"Of course, everyone knows the unemployment stats are nonsense." Really? could you please point us at the references for this statement so that we all know as well?
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Yet those people who have dropped out the labor force aren't dying of hunger - America has one of the lowest rates of malnutrition deaths in the world - which makes one wonder if stronger welfare systems are helping support people who aren't working as compared to 30 or 50 or 100 years earlier? It's an open question, I'm not sure. Something/someone must be supporting these people.
There are also people employed on the black market that aren't officially in the labor force (eg drug dealers).
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Something/someone must be supporting these people.
Yeah. Crime.
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Something/someone must be supporting these people.
Yeah. Crime.
Many people are gainfully employed at jobs not recognized by the government. This is called the underground economy. Crime is certainly included, but when I hire kids off the street and their friends to help me clean out my store, I do not report their earnings to the IRS.
A friend of mine once told me that he worked security at a flea market. At the end of the day he got a check for his wages, with deductions taken according to law. If he walks away with the check, every thing is above-board. However
Re: This is kind of hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, the baby boomers who took early retirement in 2008 have not flocked back to the workplace. Many of them are in their 70s. To get them participating in the workplace again you're going to need to completely gut social security and medicare. I know, they're working on that.
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Indeed, the baby boomers who took early retirement in 2008 have not flocked back to the workplace. Many of them are in their 70s. To get them participating in the workplace again you're going to need to completely gut social security and medicare. I know, they're working on that.
I am a leading-edge baby boomer, just turned 73 years of age. When I was laid off in 2008 I collected unemployment until it ran out, then took early Social Security. I worked in the gig economy until I was able to return to the labor force in 2015. Even with Social Security, Medicare to cover medical costs, and two pensions, I don't make enough to make ends meet, even though I live in suburban New Hampshire.
History (Score:2, Interesting)
This happened before in Europe.
In the early 80s it was a three way fight for home video recording. You had VHS, Betamax and the Phillips Video 2000 system. The first two were all Japanese machines, the latter were made by Phillips in Europe.
The Phillips format was technically great. But it came third in that race. Philips got the EEC (precursor to the EU) to put massive tariffs on Japanese machines to make them cost the same as Phipps' ones, but all that did was increase profit margins for Japanese companie
Re:History (Score:5, Informative)
Video 2000 was kinda wonky with it's reversible tapes which could store 8h in SP. The other fun thing about it was that the write protect tab could be switched on/off instead of just broken off like in VHS. Of course that probably made it hideously expensive to manufacture.
Re:History (Score:4, Interesting)
The main innovation was a crystal discipled tracking system that made the picture more stable, especially when paused or in fast forward.
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It was also the last VCR or hard disk recorder or whatever that I could program to record... If only they made one that you could program with cron jobs...
How did tariffs increase Japanese profit margins? (Score:3)
Also, as I recall those tariffs were pretty reasonable. The Japanese gov't was heavily subsidizing it's electronic industry to target foreign industries. The tariffs were in response to that. The reason Japan still came out on top, at least for a lot of American electronics (sorry, I'm a Yank) is the American stuff was kind of crap. And American cars were laugh
Re:History (Score:5, Informative)
You literally have no idea what a tariffs are, do you? If you understood tariffs you couldn't have written this sentence:
Philips got the EEC (precursor to the EU) to put massive tariffs on Japanese machines to make them cost the same as Phipps' ones, but all that did was increase profit margins for Japanese companies and relieve price pressure on their manufacturing.
An EEC/EU tariff is a tax the EEC/EU collects as certain goods cross the border, the funds collected do not go back to the manufacturer, For example, a US tariff on iPhones manufactured in China collects an amount of money equal to 25% of the cost of the item and puts it in the federal government's coffers. The 25% tariff does not go back to China, Foxconn, or Apple.
The purpose of a tariff is to increase the price foreign goods allowing domestic producers to better compete on price, agree with it/disagree with the intention, your statement belied a complete lack of understanding of how tariffs work.
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There's another problem with moving manuf
Re:History (Score:5, Insightful)
There's another problem with moving manufacturing to the US.
There's also the reality that other countries impose their own excessive, punitive tariffs on manufactured goods from the US.
Tariffs aren't uniquely American.
wrong on tarif (Score:2)
Your explanation is incorrect , or at least this is not what hapenned. Tarif do not "increase profit" for manufacturer, as the tarif is paid on the importer side and directly to the governement. In fact manufacturer only sell the same price as before. If you export a 10$ widget and somebody put a tarif on
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Yes, I also watched Techmoan ;-)
This is not the full picture. It is a fact Japanese manufacturers flooded the world with cheap subsidized electronics in order to take over consumer market segments. EEC measures simply went into effect too late to matter. Limp dick US was too corrupt to do anything, even actual penalties were never enforced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Right from the horses mouth https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/... [sony.net]
and 1 hour long "Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television
Or assemble them anywhere else but China (Score:4, Insightful)
Why United States?
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Why United States?
so the coal workers have something to do all day.
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There's a country that just reached a trade deal with the US: Mexico. Apple could manufacture in Mexico.
Now we know (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazing how Trump has transformed the Republican party into being everything they used to be against.
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So you're saying... Trump is a Democrat and we should support him, since he's against the GOP?
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So you're saying... Trump is a Democrat and we should support him, since he's against the GOP?
Here is what I am saying. Republicans tell us they are against taxes. Trump puts tariffs on Chinese good, which ar exactly taxes.
Republicans have always consiudered Russia a mortal enemy. There is only one world leader that Trump has not had a word of dissent for. Putin.
There are others. And the Republican party has not lifted one finger to disagree witrh him.
And as former George W Bush said If you are not with us, you are against us.
Core values of the Republican party have been usurped, And the spi
They're still on Brand (Score:2)
The trouble is swing voters. Swing voters don't usually pay attention to policy, they pay attention to how the candidate mak
Find millions of laborers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that they need that many. In the U.S., a million Chinese laborers become 999,000 robots and 1,000 robot technicians.
But their per version $100-200 price increases (Score:3, Insightful)
As I sit here with my old mobile phone that does everything I want. It is all about choice and needs.
Just my 2 cents
No, no it isn't 3.9% (Score:5, Informative)
given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%
No, no it isn't. The current U6 unemployment rate as of August 2018 is 7.40 [macrotrends.net], and even that fails to count many people. Anyone who reports the U2 unemployment rate is repeating a blatant and willful lie, which makes them at best an accessory to that lie. Do your research.
Re:No, no it isn't 3.9% (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No, no it isn't 3.9% (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is this 21.2% is in large part the Trump die-hard base members; people who have been unemployed for so long the Feds don't even count them as real people anymore. That's 53M over-18 people.
You really think the majority of Trump's base are long-term unemployed adults? Let's think about that - you think millions and millions of long-term unemployed adults with no means other than government handouts, are die-hard trump supporters cheering him on to wipe out the very programs they personally rely on to survive? Conventional wisdom is that those without other means of support tend to fall on the democratic end of the political spectrum.
Re:No, no it isn't 3.9% (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, no it isn't 3.9% (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, yes, because those long term unemployed adults are called retirees
Hold on a minute. So Trump is lying about unemployment because he quoted a rate that doesn't include RETIREES?
Your comments about drug and medical costs are irrelevant. I'd love to see major changes in the US Healthcare system, but anyone who calls a number "unemployment" when it includes retirees is full of shit. If somebody retired and then ran out of money and started looking for work then they're unemployed, but you can't just say that everyone who is not working is unemployed. At least not if you want to keep the word "unemployed" as a bad thing.
Unemployment means #1 you want to work and #2 you're able to work. If you don't meet both those criteria then you're not unemployed regardless of whether you don't have a job.
And if the only "work" you're willing to do is work that no one is willing to pay you for then you don't qualify as wanting to work. I do things that require skill and effort but that no one would be willing to pay me to do but I also do things a company IS willing to pay me for. If I CHOOSE to only do the former and not the later then I should NOT BE counted as unemployed.
not happening (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the factories could be built here for a reasonable cost, even if the ecosystem of manufacturing suppliers could be recreated here, even if there were enough people looking for work, Americans would not want to take jobs working at such factories even at average factory wages.
Try to bring those jobs back here and welcome to $2000 iphones.
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FFS the factories in China are optimized for an inexhaustible supply of low-skill, low-wage workers, perhaps Apple could tap into their massive corporate holding and push their engineers to design iPhones and other products that don't require manually-intensive assembly?
Just because iPhones are made in sweat shops now, doesn't mean they have to be made is sweat shops going forward.
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He said it, now it will Happen! (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, Trump told Apple what they needed to do. That was the problem with Apple, their management was totally clueless and had no idea what to do. They probably did not even have a meeting on the subject.
Now that Trump has finally spoken up and now they know what to do!
</sarcasm>
Why? (Score:2)
Since when do Apple or their users care about prices?
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We always care about prices. ... just replaced the battery for something like $10.
That is why I have my 8 year old trusty iPhone 4S
the price of the mac mini can go up (Score:2)
with the same very old of date hardware.
Sure, soon as Trump starts using American workers (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-hire-40-foreign-workers-mar-lago-1011011 [newsweek.com]
If I were China (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd really stick it to the US. Just shut down all exports to the US, pending trade talks. We would really feel that.
Trump is playing a very dangerous game with the dragon.
Re: If I were China (Score:5, Interesting)
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China is not the only other country in the world. If China stops selling stuff to the US, Americans would just do business with somewhere else. I'm not saying the price would necessarily be as low but probably close, given the large volume of demand and likelihood of multiple sources of competitive vendors.
Seriously? (Score:2)
Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products, given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%.
Are you really arguing that a) it takes literally "millions" of workers to produce cellphones, and b) we can't bring manufacturing jobs back to America because we lack "millions" of workers?
Perhaps without an infinitely large minimal wage-earning workforce, Apple might choose to change it's manufacturing process to leverage more automation? Just a thought.
"Start building new plants now" (Score:2)
Production plants don't spring up overnight... even if Apple were to do this, by the time the production plants in the USA were ready, consumer demand for Apple products would have long since completely acclimated to the increased cost a, and the price wouldn't suddenly go back down just because they are building in the USA... given that the USA does not have the ability to produce some things as cheaply as China can, it is unlikely that even if they COULD move production to America overnight, prices would
BS, piled higher and deeper (Score:2, Informative)
It took decades to destroy the US electronics manufacturing industry. The workers in it were high school grads. Today, they work at Burger King. It would take at least a decade to build a functioning consumer electronics industry.
What is lacking is not labor, but knowhow. Knowhow is the stuff that is not in books or journals, but resides in the heads of people who know how to actually build stuff. It can take decades to build knowhow, and that's exactly what the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanes
No one is moving jobs to US because of Trump (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama already tried (Score:4, Interesting)
Building the phone in U.S. would not lower tariffs (Score:3)
The assembly of the iPhone is a small portion of its costs. All of the significant parts such as processors, displays, chipsets, etc. are made by TSMC, Samsung, etc. overseas and would still be subject to tariffs. So moving assembly here would do little to decrease the costs of the tariffs. And because we would be forced to use more robotics to keep costs reasonable, it would also do little to create jobs.
And, does he really think anyone wants to be building factories while his tariffs are in effect? Most of what goes in a modern factory is made overseas and subject to, guess what, Trump's tariffs.
Moreover, why encourage Apple to move the least sophisticated, lowest skilled portion of the work here? Is that what Trump feels would restore our allegedly lost greatness? How about encouraging home-based chip and display manufacturing? The only US foundry working on 7nm just gave up. Intel is behind on 10nm. The only possible source for Apple's new processors is, guess who, Taiwan.
China is not lowest cost anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't that long ago that Nokia and Motorola had mobile phone factories in the US - I was there in the 90's. Many computers were also made in the US before. The manufacturing of mobile phones is becoming more and more automated. Even in the Foxconn factory (I've been there too), they are using fewer and fewer workers. The main things making the cost of manufacturing in the US higher than China are regulations related to pollution and taxes. The labor cost in China is getting very close to the US - close enough that it is already making no sense to make some things there and then ship them all the way to the other side of the planet.
China stopped being the lowest labor cost place to manufacture for many industries, years ago. An analysis in 2016 found the cost to assemble iphones in the US would only add roughly 5% to the cost - this was 2 years ago. My only point is entire industries that were in the US and EU 25yrs ago could be moved back home.
https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
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Yeah, but in both cases only in the US muhuhuhuaaaa!
In Europe and Asia they stay the same, theoretically. But I guess Apple would adjust its prices everywhere.
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It doesn't matter what he believes as long as his political base believes that Trump is going to lead them to their imagined fantastic version of America that all of this is supposed to create. They should probably just go back to church and pray. I'm much less convinced of tariffs doing any good for our economy than I am of
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He doesn't seem to know what a supply chain is either. To build a tariff free iPhone in the US would require new mines, many factories, infrastructure... Assuming Apple decided to build all that they would pass the cost on to the consumer.
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You're applying a 3rd world solution (labor) to a 1st world manufacturing problem. In USA you should be building with robots not laborers, and robots don't ask for wages.
No, but the people who program the robots ask for salaries, and the ones servicing them ask for contracts.
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Electronic devices like iPhones are already almost entirely built by robots. Robots cut the circuit boards to size, pick and place the components on the boards, and wave solder those components. Specialized testing hardware performs hardware-level verification to ensure that all this happened correctly. The only things that humans do are:
Re: Build in USA with robots (Score:3)
>Load new component reels into the pick-and-place robot.
Believe me or not, this what our company had huge problem.
Not a single man was found for a trivial $60k job to tender a pick and place machine. Oregon, Washington, BC - not a single legit response in 6 month.
I can't imagine to have this issue in China. In Shenzhen you can find a programmer for every chipshooter imaginable in 1 day for such salary.
Re: Build in USA with robots (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to do Perl programming, I had to move from Pittsburgh to Tucson, AZ because there were no Perl positions in Pittsburgh and had to move half-way across the country because they could find no one locally for the position. If you are Shenzhen, there are thousand chip programmers because there are literally a thousand companies with those sorts of jobs, of course there is no problem with finding someone there!
I can imagine most people would not know what a "pick and place machine" is. Why would people apply for a job just because a company is offering a salary? Most companies don't respond to most job applications and why waste time for applying for positions they barely know anything about? Where is the responsibility of the company to train and educate people they wish to employ?
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Then you like get something that looks exactly like an iPhone, when you boot it it still looks like an iPhone, when you are on the home screen all icons still look like an iPhone.
As soon as you open an app, you realize it is Android.
Re:Prices increase either way. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trump didn't engineer the improved relations between the Koreas. Kim did that. He pushed to it the brink, proved that the US couldn't do anything now he has nukes on missiles, and then sued for peace when his own power and future were secured.
At best Trump's role was "useful idiot".
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I was just going to suggest Trump supporters are unlikely to believe in recycling anyway LOL
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Because: facts. If you want to "believe", you're welcome to your religion and you may pay to recycle privately.
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Yes. Trump supporters have their own alternate facts also.
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https://www.plasticpollutionco... [plasticpol...lition.org]
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In most cases, no. Recycle the very few materials where it makes economic sense. For the rest, stop pretending.
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In most cases, no. Recycle the very few materials where it makes economic sense. For the rest, stop pretending.
Like beer cans. Something Trump supporters should be intimately familiar with.
https://www.beveragedaily.com/... [beveragedaily.com]
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Agree that Hillary was a pretty awful candidate. Electing Trump instead was not a "look how smart we are" moment though.
Vanity again. The other girls in my middle school class can't even!
Meanwhile, economy is going great, Americans have jobs and a reason to feel good about their economic prospects for the first time in 10 years.
As for foreigners, America used to have lots of friends in the world. Now you have people who tolerate you out of necessity.
I'm sure that will recover in time once you have a normal person in charge again though.
Yeah. I don't care. No one else in the US should care either. Foreign countries claim friendship or don't, and they pursue their own agendas. They'll never choose what's good for the US over what's good for their own people — and they shouldn't.
Are diplomatic smiles genuine or forced? What
Re:Recycling solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, economy is going great, Americans have jobs and a reason to feel good about their economic prospects for the first time in 10 years.
That is true in most places. The long recovery from 2008 is not a Trump exclusive
They'll never choose what's good for the US over what's good for their own people
Those are not necessarily mutually exclusive things. Or didn't use to be anyway.
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There’s never been a prolonged shortage of raw materials. And every time someone predicts such a shortage, they end up being laughably wrong.
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You have clearly never visited China and seen the quality of typical Chinese manufacturing.
The Chinese are neither worse nor better than anyone else at manufacturing. Cheap, crappy products that come from manufacturers there are such because of the price and quality constraints they were contracted to build at. Specify a higher quality standard and pay for it, and they're just as capable as anyone else of turning out a quality product. The Fender (Fender, not Squier) bass that I own was made under contr