Trump Says Apple Will Not Be Given Tariff Waivers or Relief For Mac Pro Parts Made In China (cnbc.com) 210
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: In a tweet on Friday, President Trump said his administration will not grant Apple any relief on Mac Pro parts made in China. "Apple will not be given Tariff wavers (sic), or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China," President Trump said. "Make them in USA, no Tariffs!" Apple asked for waivers on tariffs on the Mac Pro. Apple said it wanted to be exempt on some parts it uses for the new Mac Pro, including a power supply unit, the stainless-steel enclosure, finished mice and trackpads and circuit boards. "There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," Apple said in a filing. Apple shifted production of the Mac Pro to China in June, saving shipping costs for components that are supplied near Shanghai.
Great! (Score:1)
Re: Great! (Score:1)
For you and your kind (I use the term very loosely) there was never any point. How's the water feel?
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If you're releasing a mobile app, Android is one leg and iOS is the other. That's just how the market is right now.
You don't need a Mac Pro to develop an iPhone app. The only reason you might need one for Apple development is if you're developing a hardcore MacOS application. You can use a much, much lesser Macintosh.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're releasing a mobile app, Android is one leg and iOS is the other.
If the app is free, that is true.
But if you make money by selling the app itself, 95% of your sales will be on iOS and 5% on Android.
Android users don't pay for apps.
Re: Great! (Score:2)
Sounds plausible, but do you have any source to back that up?
Figure out av app rev via financial reports (Score:2)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com]
You could repeat the analysis that Forbes did. Go to Google and Apple annual financial reports, they are public, and note the total dollars paid to app developers. Go find Google and Apple's public PR statement about how many apps are available on their respective stores. Divide revenue by the number of apps.
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Android users don't pay for apps.
No, they provide you an endless revenue source through adverts. I remember discussing this with someone who made a fairly simple (cheap) app. He said he made far more money with the free Android version than he ever did on the paid for iOS version due to this.
Re: Great! (Score:1)
Maybe worldwide, but in highly developed countries like the US/UK/France/Germany, their share ranges from over 50% to around 30%. Plus, itâ(TM)s proven time and time again that iPhone users actually buy apps and spend a disproportionate amount of money doing so. In other words, they are more desirable customers.
Androids huge market share doesnâ(TM)t mean much when most of it comes from Asia, where the OS is essentially nothing more than a base for using WeChat.
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Someone developing software for iOS and/or macOS is unlikely to care much about what Crazy Uncle Richard says.
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Great! I look forward to paying a bazillion dollars for the 'honor' of owning hardware which allow me to develop for the Apple ecosystem. At some point it just won't be worth it.
Maybe when you recover from that hategasm, and if you think really really hard, then maybe you'll realise that this is going to affect a whole lot more American companies than just Apple.
Its broken clock time, he got one right (Score:3, Interesting)
Great! I look forward to paying a bazillion dollars for the 'honor' of owning hardware which allow me to develop for the Apple ecosystem. At some point it just won't be worth it.
Maybe when you recover from that hategasm, and if you think really really hard, then maybe you'll realise that this is going to affect a whole lot more American companies than just Apple.
If you think a bit harder you might realize that is the point, and that is better for the US. Don't let your hate of the orange dude blind you, its broken clock time, he got one right
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Tarrifs are not good policy. Ask any credible economist.
The federal government paid farmers billions of dollars last year to keep them from going under after Trump's adventures in trade wars caused exports to dry up. They will pay them even more this year. (This is literally Trump using federal tax dollars to bribe people who voted for him to keep voting for him)
Prices of US made goods using imported materials are going up across the board. Imported goods are going up. You are paying more for no reason.
If y
Tariffs OK with unfair trading partner (Score:5, Insightful)
Tarrifs are not good policy. Ask any credible economist.
Silly little internet economist, go take HS economics or College Economics 101. Tariffs are awful policy when dealing with an economic downturn, a recession or depression. However responding to an unfair trading partner is something entirely different. You are conflating apples with oranges.
What the orange dude is doing is using policy selectively against an unfair partner. This is something entirely different than Hoover's tariffs during the Great Depression (actually Smoot-Hawley Tariff).
If you think tariffs are good, you are not equipped to have an adult conversation about economics.
If you think tariffs are never an appropriate response, that there is no appropriate context for tariffs, you are unqualified to participate in a conversation about economics.
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You are conflating apples with oranges.
What the apple dude is doing is using policy selectively against an unfair partner. This is something entirely different than Hoover's tariffs during the Great Depression (actually Smoot-Hawley Tariff).
ftfy
Re: Tariffs OK with unfair trading partner (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree that I don't like tariffs, I have to concede that Trump is using them as intended. (At least in China's case)
When a foreign firm produces a product and prices it such that it forces/causes shut down of local production, tariffs are levied such that local production can be preserved. China has done this for a great deal of products, yet has been ignored for quite some time.
They now produce almost all of the rare earth materials needed for modern computing. In fact their production is so efficie
American dummy spit (Score:3)
In fact their production is so efficient that many other countries shut down production entirely, it will take years for the US to get production back up to what it once was.
Whhhaaaa it's not fair they're too efficient. Daddy, make American consumers pay more so we can keep a handful of inefficient business in bribe money.
trade deficits... not bigger (Score:1)
However responding to an unfair trading partner is something entirely different. You are conflating apples with oranges.
What the orange dude is doing is using policy selectively against an unfair partner. This is something entirely different than Hoover's tariffs during the Great Depression (actually Smoot-Hawley Tariff).
And ever since Trump enacted tariffs against China to fight trade deficits.... the trade deficit has gotten bigger.
So what, exactly, is the point of them? What is being accomplished besides (a) having US consumers paying higher prices and (b) US farmers have their products languish (and having to be baled out)?
And remember: tariffs have not been placed only on Chinese goods. Canadian steel has been tariffed (for "national security" reasons): how's that working out for US consumers and US industry?
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And ever since Trump enacted tariffs against China to fight trade deficits.... the trade deficit has gotten bigger.
The "unfairness" being addressed isn't the trade deficit. It is the predatory behavior of China, their tariffs, their forced technology transfers, their forced partnerships, their intellectual property theft, etc. The trade deficit is just the symptom of these root problems.
Plus economics is often concerned with the longer term. Your short term analysis is how we got into this mess. For example a current CEO thinking they can make money in the short term via China, that the long term problem of training
Arer you sure you're not WindBourne? (Score:2)
Tariffs on imported Chinese goods have zero impact on US farmers selling their goods.
You think farmers don't buy any Chinese goods at all? You think they enjoy paying more?
And thats completely separate from the completely obvious retaliation by China of purchasing less American farm goods.
Do you not hear any news at all?
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I remember a Planet Money episode from back in 2009, when Obama was thinking about taxing Chinese t
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Silly little internet economist, tariffs would be a bad idea even if these were unfair trading partners. (Of course, they're mostly not unfair trading partners ..
Work on that reading comprehension, I said "partner" singular, not "partners" plural. After working on comprehension, and taking the HS economics or College Economics 101 class, get back to us.
... Just yesterday Trump threatened yet more tariffs, this time directed at France.
A straw man argument, I was discussing China not France. There will be logic classes in HS and College too when you get there.
I remember a Planet Money episode from back in 2009, when Obama was thinking about taxing Chinese tires, ...
Apple and oranges. We are discussing US/China trade in its entirety, China's predatory practices in is entirety. And responses at that level. These are things quite different, an action taken
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Canada? The EU? These are "unfair partners"?
At times. As unfair as we let them be. And we are as unfair to them as they let us be. One party corrects some inequity when the other party threatens some sanction or another. Are you seriously going to argue that US/Canada US/EU trade never gets out of whack somehow and one side or the other starts to complain and make threats? That one side or the other never attempts some protectionism if they think they can get away with it?
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That one side or the other never attempts some protectionism if they think they can get away with it?
Protectionism is bad policy and bad economics even if trading partners don't retaliate.
Retaliation just makes a bad policy even worse.
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That one side or the other never attempts some protectionism if they think they can get away with it?
Protectionism is bad policy and bad economics even if trading partners don't retaliate. Retaliation just makes a bad policy even worse.
The science of economics, the theory of free trade, is based in part on the notion of rational behavior. It is rational for one party to test the tolerance of the other party. Retaliation, or the threat of retaliation, is the other party's rational response to the first party's "unfairness". If your trading partner is being unfair what should be the response, to end all trade, to ask them politely to be fair? Note that the rational response to the polite request is to engineer an answer claiming that one is
Re: Its broken clock time, he got one right (Score:2)
Soybean prices crashed for the farmers because of the swine disease epidemic in China. China did not stop buying US soy out of retaliation. The animals they feed them to all had to be slaughtered.
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If you think a bit harder you might realize that is the point, and that is better for the US.
It's better that the additional costs get passed on as a consumption tax, and now our money buys less goods than it used to before the tariffs?
First, tariffs are not necessarily passed on to the consumers in its entirety. A manufacturer may fear losing market share and absorb some of the tariff costs. An importer may shift from a Chinese supplier to a Vietnamese or other supplier to avoid a tariff. The produce domestically or overseas decision is sometimes a close one, its not as simple as worker wages and lax environmental laws for some companies. A supply chain stretching to China has its own expenses and complications that need to be factored i
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Even if manufacturing were to return to America, the jobs won't follow. The higher wages just means much more incentive to automate.
Still an improvement. The money spent in an area has a beneficial multiplier effect. A small number of jobs, some additional local spending, is better than no jobs no local spending.
... are basically funded to a large degree by US consumers buying Chinese manufacture goods.
Plus its better than spending in China which helps to fund their military modernization and expansion, their vehicle to bully their neighboring countries. Those artificial islands, the aircraft carrier, the new missiles, the new jets
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I don't understand what else you expect capitalism to be except predatory everything. It's kind of the point of it.
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I don't understand what else you expect capitalism to be except predatory everything. It's kind of the point of it.
But in free trade there is balance. One trading partner will tolerate only so much imbalance and retaliate or trade elsewhere. That keeps the system working. Our current problem is the result of too much tolerance, we had a policy of such tolerance because we believed increased business interaction would lead to increased political liberalization in China. That theory has failed. So we are moving back to rational self interest with a low tolerance for abuse.
In short our trade with China was guided by pol
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Second, it is better in the long term because the US needs some domestic manufacturing capability for a healthier economy
Except US manufacturing output [stlouisfed.org] was at an all-time high in 2018Q4...a bit lower since then, probably because of tariffs on manufacturing inputs...
Plenty of things are made in the US, they are just high-value (like airplanes and SpaceX rockets) and often made by robots instead of people.
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It seems you're brain can't comprehend why we need China more than China needs us.
Actually it is precisely the opposite, they need us more.
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That assumes there's a competitor to lose market share to, ...
Of course, however we are already seeing some manufacturing moving from China to other developing Asian nations, and some to Mexico. I was surprised recently to see some computer monitors that were assembled in Mexico rather than China.
... or that the companies even want to engage in a price war with each other.
But some companies were already doing so before the tariffs to acquire and/or maintain market share. Some of these are not passing along the full tariff costs in order to maintain that market share.
... Recently, with the washing machine tariffs ...
Cherry picking comparisons won't be very useful. Its just simply untrue, bot
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Don't worry, China pays the tariffs, right? Right?!
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I look forward to paying a bazillion dollars for the 'honor' of owning hardware which allow me to develop for the Apple ecosystem. At some point it just won't be worth it.
Does it strike anyone else as crazy that a particular piece of hardware is required to write software for Apple devices? Is this just because Apple doesn't support alternative platforms for their development tools or because they take steps to actively prevent other hardware from being used to run their development software? Microsoft makes Visual Studio and .NET development tools available for both Mac and Linux platforms. Shouldn't developers be able to use the hardware that they prefer, regardless of wha
Re: Great! (Score:1)
Apple isn't good enough at development to keep a cross platform toolchain going. They can barely keep the userland on their own hardware current. It's no different than it was with quicktime and itunes on Windows in the past. Apple has never been any good on open architectures.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Er, when were you ever not paying a bazillion dollars for Apple hardware? Also I have trouble imagining why Apple needed to save shipping, or any other costs, on a computer that starts at $6000 USD.
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You know they'll just move production to Mexico (Score:2, Interesting)
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
Vietnam, Philippines, still an improvement. Neither an emerging global security threat.
We really don't need to be funneling money to China as they seek to create The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0.
"The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was an imperialist concept created and promulgated for occupied Asian populations from 1930 to 1945 by the Empire of Japan."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
True, but we might end up doing that anyway (Score:2)
And in any case it doesn't change my point, which is that the jobs aren't coming back just because we do a few tariffs. On the other hand about the only thing that has blunted the damage to
A lesser improvement is still an improvement (Score:2)
Sorry, I'm not being clear (Score:2)
In other words if your goal is to prevent China from building a united front against t
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In other words if your goal is to prevent China from building a united front against the US in Asia this isn't how to do it.
The US not tolerating predatory trade helps regional powers to likewise not tolerate predatory trade, which help others in the region not tolerate predatory trade.
Plus there is not having the US fund China's military modernization and growth so that it can more effectively bully others in the region.
The underlying problem with "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" is that it was the result of military invasion and occupation. 2.0 might be the results of bullying and threat. However a local econ
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or Vietnam. Or the Philippians.
Yes but none of those countries is China. Which is all the more reason for China to renegotiate. Which helps US manufacturing as a whole, instead of focusing on one single product.
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Sourcing from other countries will raise costs, in many cases more than the 25% tariffs, some witnesses told a panel of officials from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, the Commerce Department, State Department and other federal agencies.
Trump and top members of his cabinet have said that the tariffs, if imposed, would accelerate a move of manufacturing out of China.
But dozens of witnesses in oral and written testimony said that moving operations to Vietnam and other countries would not be feasible for years due to a lack of skills and infrastructure in those locations. China dominates global
production in industries from shoes to electronics to port gantry cranes.
Apple is really offshoring for profits this time (Score:4, Interesting)
"There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," Apple said in a filing.
There were no sources in China until you went there and made a deal for them to manufacture you proprietary, unique, non-off-the-self components. Do the same in the US and there will be domestic suppliers as well.
And no, don't try to make a "Murica can't manufacture in volume like China". This is the Mac Pro, they will not be made or sold in any sort of volume. That is why they were being made in the USA.
The orange dude is correct, it broken clock time. This is a case of a corporation offshoring manufacturing for profits.
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"There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," Apple said in a filing.
There were no sources in China until you went there and made a deal for them to manufacture you proprietary, unique, non-off-the-self components. Do the same in the US and there will be domestic suppliers as well.
And no, don't try to make a "Murica can't manufacture in volume like China". This is the Mac Pro, they will not be made or sold in any sort of volume. That is why they were being made in the USA.
The orange dude is correct, it broken clock time. This is a case of a corporation offshoring manufacturing for profits.
So? Why is Apple being punished for that? The entire point of offshoring is lowering costs, that's no secret. Who are these tariffs supposed to punish?
This goes back to Trump's claims that China/Mexico pay for tariffs. You pay for tariffs.
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Too much offshoring harms the national interest, the citizenry. Elected leaders are supposed to serve the national interest, the citizens, not the financial reports of Wall Street's leading companies. Our leaders have been serving the 1% for too long by tolerating a policy that has become harmful to the national interest. That the orange dude embraced this problem for his political gain does not change the underlying reality of our failed trade policy with China and the need to correct things.
How do tariffs on goods from China bring jobs and money to America? The tariffs are meant to punish China, and they punish China, American businesses, and American consumers. Apple is free to move production to the next cheapest country which still isn't America, and raise your prices.
You can play whack a mole and tariff everything you deem unfair, and then still, it will be cheaper to do many things overseas!
So tariff ALL imports? That's insanity, and I think you understand that. These tariffs are targ
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Too much offshoring harms the national interest, the citizenry. Elected leaders are supposed to serve the national interest, the citizens, not the financial reports of Wall Street's leading companies. Our leaders have been serving the 1% for too long by tolerating a policy that has become harmful to the national interest. That the orange dude embraced this problem for his political gain does not change the underlying reality of our failed trade policy with China and the need to correct things. Apple is free to move production to the next cheapest country which still isn't America, and raise your prices.
How do tariffs on goods from China bring jobs and money to America? The tariffs are meant to punish China, and they punish China, American businesses, and American consumers.
The lack of a waiver for one of the most powerful and influential corporations sets an example to others during their onshore/offshore decision. Contrary to popular belief the decision to offshore is sometimes a close one. It is not as simple as wages and lax environmental laws (both of which might be improving, and making the US a little more competitive, however there is still the predatory behavior that is national policy). Offshoring introduces a whole new set of complications and costs to a company tha
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The lack of a waiver for one of the most powerful and influential corporations sets an example to others during their onshore/offshore decision
UUUGGGGHHH!! This literally avoids the reality of any other person who this is supposed to set an example to has been bought up by someone who will just absorb this whole thing and wait it out. Jesus buttery nipples, it like you're wanting to avoid how stupidly concentrated this economy is for sake of argument that tariffs work. They don't, full stop.
tariffs are a tool in the toolbox for unfair trading partners
China will never play fair, to think they will is incredibly dumb or intentionally misleading. There is not a "fix China trade", there is "we no longer tra
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>China will never play fair, to think they will is incredibly dumb or intentionally misleading. There is not a "fix China trade", there is "we no longer trade with them" or "we accept the crap the country gives us". There is not a middle ground on that.
Nope, China needs the US market. They will play fair when made to, when they have no other choice. They will not choose "no trade". Similar pattern with the EU market, as the US improves trade the EU will insist on fairer behavior too.
This is all nothing new. This has been going on since there were free markets. One party takes advantage of another to the degree they are permitted. We were simply being permissive because of 1960s/70s foreign policy intervening with trade policy, i.e. the theory that grea
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Nope, China needs the US market
Somewhat, my guess however, is that China is relying on BIRCS to hedge some of that reliance. In addition, we're making some non-friends to the south of us and that whole leaving TPP opened a door up for others. I'm not indicating that China will be super-powerhouse without US, but we've given them a lot of materials to work from to keep them pushing steam for the next 100 years. While the political climate may tire of the whole back and forth with Chinese trade, China and the US aren't governments to le
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I'm not indicating that China will be super-powerhouse without US, but we've given them a lot of materials to work from to keep them pushing steam for the next 100 years.
My point is that a big part of the "push" is our tolerance of unfair trade, a tolerance that might have been rational in the 1960s/70s but not since the late 1980s.
China and the US aren't governments to let go of a grudge so easily. So even if where we are at currently doesn't resolve at the oust of Commander in Orage in 20(whatever). China will be more than happy to remember this episode clear into 2100s and in the meantime, work on connections not so deeply involved in the US.
And the US can likewise work on connections not involving China, which is sort of what the orange dude is causing to a degree, which is a win. Plus a future Chinese government may not be the Chinese Communist Party, how that government views our interactions with the CCP may be quite different than the CCP's.
Well you're assuming the government will relent and attempt to head back to prior prosperity.
Nope, what I am assuming is that they
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Too much offshoring harms the national interest, the citizenry
The citizens are not the national interest, so let's get that out the way first and foremost. We've never been that country that you're thinking that we ought to be and the founding fathers of this country never envisioned that. This country has been of equally being able to go after the pursuit of happiness which is basically 18th century speak for "get rich". We're interested in promoting US citizens becoming richer than say Chinese citizens becoming rich, but US citizen pitted against US citizen for w
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This is a case of a corporation offshoring manufacturing for profits.
And the appropriate response is to tax the consumer. ...
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This is a case of a corporation offshoring manufacturing for profits
Isn't that what American companies are supposed to do? Profit above all else? All this sounds like is some rich guy who is hurt that there's some richer guy.
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Burn dumbasses
Ah, someone quoting the Chinese Communist Party Five Year Plan for American industry.
Or is it the Ten Year Plan? I think they are still luring some dumbasses with promises of access to the Chinese market for the five year timeframe.
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> Do the same in the US and there will be domestic suppliers as well.
This is very simplistic thinking that completely disregards the structural shifts that have taken place in the U.S. economy.
You are failing to consider that the Mac Pro is a low volume product. The iPhone analogy is a false one, the Mac Pro does not need the scale of production that the iPhone needs. The previous Mac Pro was successfully made in the US.
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Part of the problem in the US is that US consumers, in general, consider nothing other than price. That is
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Except it wasn't low volume enough, because a big problem for the Mac Pro was... screws. The company Apple hired to make the screws couldn't make enough of them to satisfy daily production, and no one else wanted to do them. And the company behind them hired more people and did more shifts to produce more screws, but they still coul
More Apple scumbaggery (Score:4, Insightful)
When apple said "There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," in their filing, they wanted everybody to forget that they are one of the richest and most profitable companies on planet Earth. Anybody who sees their massive new spaceship/frisbee headquarters knows full well that they could easily build a factory anywhere on Earth (including in the US or Canada) to make any parts as needed. When they design a nice shiny new product, they always design some new part that does not yet exist and then they have some vendor setup to make that new part. Molds are made, machines setup, employees trained, and so forth.
The fact that they chose to make a part in China, and now having made it it China, it is only available from China, means NOTHING legitimate about whether a company sitting on BILLIONS of dollars in cash could also have that part made in the USA. It's bad enough that Apple pays taxes in China, effectively funding the Chinese military, and then avoids paying taxes in the USA. It's worse that, in order to have cheap workers make stuff for them in China, they had to transfer tech to China and teach the Chinese how to make it, further enabling the Chinese military-industrial complex. The newest production transfer was fust Tim Cook mooning Americans.
Apple knew in advance that those tariffs would apply when they did an in-your-face insult to the American public and moved production to China. Time to triple the tariffs. Apple needs to re-learn a basic lession of civilization: governments are more powerful than companies and companies must obey the laws, pay the taxes, and benerally behave themselves.
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>Anybody who sees their massive new spaceship/frisbee headquarters knows full well that they could easily build a factory anywhere on Earth (including in the US or Canada) to make any parts as needed
And where will they find legal workers who will work at the salaries that would be needed to make this work with no price increase?
They would recover some shipping cost. The salaries would more than eat that up.
Plus, the factories don't exist, they would have to build them from scratch. They would probably be
Labor is a rather small part of the overall cost (Score:2)
And where will they find legal workers who will work at the salaries that would be needed to make this work with no price increase?
At the community colleges where kids can get a near-free education in the manufacturing trades.
The labor rate argument is a red herring. An economics professor at USC found that US labor rates would only raise the prices of an iPhone by about 8-10%. Labor is a rather small part of the overall cost.
While you could make a volume manufacturing argument with respect to iPhones, this case is about the Mac Pro which is an extremely low volume product so such arguments are irrelevant. The Mac Pros were being
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This.
Exactly.
The reason why the Chinese have the market cornered in this department is not because they were actively sought out, it's because domestic suppliers were simply unable to compete and eventually closed up shop, allowing the Chinese to continue to adapt to changing technologies and surpassing any remotely possible domestic production capacity by leaps and bounds. If the kinds of pressures to buy domestic we are seeing now had been present all along, it is unlikely we would have ever gotten
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>China made smart moves in investing in infrastructure to support manufacturing digital gear. Like, they built factories to make all the tiny screws needed to put stuff together. Build a factory here and you still have to get the screws shipped from China, adding to cost and potential shipping delays. They also invested in plants to build manufacturing machinery, which we did not.
Yes, the American machining industry left the building a decade ago.
Re: More Apple scumbaggery (Score:1)
I think it would even better for us for Apple to go belly up die already.
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Re: More Apple scumbaggery (Score:3)
That's not how this works. Apple, particularly Cook, has a fiduciary duty to maximize profit when the opportunity arises. Now, one may argue that the move from the US to China wasn't in the best interest of the company long-term, but that would require clairvoyance or some other knowledge of the future that the little orange hands in the big white house would continue his tantrum this long. While we normals may see this as not an issue for a company with more cash than you or I will ever see in our lifetime
Weak argument (Score:5, Informative)
It’s obvious I’m not a Trump supporter, but - Apple’s argument for tariff relief seems pretty weak. Of COURSE you can only get those parts in China... because you basically set the supply chain up that way!
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It’s obvious I’m not a Trump supporter, but - Apple’s argument for tariff relief seems pretty weak. Of COURSE you can only get those parts in China... because you basically set the supply chain up that way!
Well, thankfully it's only Apple who did that, so this will only affect them.
Everybody did it and it's not simple (Score:1)
1) Circuits are made up many components. Computers involve a massive supply chain unmatched by almost any other product; its closer to manufacturing a car. Each component shipment and tariff cost multiplies with the amount of components involved.
2) China was cheaper and everything local died off. Now they are behind in tech and dead. Who is going to startup from scratch in the USA and wait decades before a break even point when survival depends upon decades of tariffs staying around at levels that actually
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1) Circuits are made up many components. Computers involve a massive supply chain unmatched by almost any other product; its closer to manufacturing a car...You can't re-create many specialist industries in the USA to support complex products which need to keep costs down. In China, you can walk a few blocks from your factory and find another factory making another component you need.
So, China is like Detroit.
Detroit metro area has the largest number of licensed engineers per capita on the planet, a workforce willing to work cheaply, and an overabundance of very inexpensive industrial sites.
Tell us again how China is special and we could never re-create a supply chain method we invented.
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Yes. But how much time and money and government support did it take to do it? Will American companies have all that? Especially the government support, especially now with Trump.
What was America doing at the time? Helping China by offshoring anything and everything they could to save a buck.
China did it with much lower wages and regulations and most importantly lots of government support. It will be even harder for America to do it now, while China still has lower wages less regulations and still a lot o
Re: (Score:2)
Re-read the story of when, only about a month before it was to launch, Steve Jobs woke up one day and decided that, instead of plastic, the iPhone should have a glass screen. Short version: It took 96 hours in China, to source the supplies, pivot thousands of workers, and re-tool the factory to make the switch and begin producing 10,000 units per day.
Are you really going to claim that Detroit has that sort of speed and flexibility?
Re:Weak argument (Score:5, Insightful)
It’s obvious I’m not a Trump supporter, but - Apple’s argument for tariff relief seems pretty weak. Of COURSE you can only get those parts in China... because you basically set the supply chain up that way!
Though here's the big problem with any action like this by the Trump administration.
Sure you can read the headlines, and maybe even a well researched article or two, and even the best journalists don't really have the capacity to research decisions like this in detail. You need to rely on the administration to make decisions like this in a fair or impartial manner.
Is the denial of Apple's petition a consistent application of the administration's policy, or is it being made due to the administration's animosity to the company's perceived political alignment?
If this were the Bush or Obama administration I'd say policy was the major factor. Lobbyists might tip the scales but it's based on the analysis of long-term bureaucrats and the politics wouldn't be a major factor.
But for Trump? The decision comes out in the form of a misspelt tweet. Did the analysis matter at all or is this just Trump taking a short at a "liberal icon"? Singling out a tech CEO he doesn't get along with (just wait Washington Po... I mean Amazon!!)
This kind of off-the-cuff unaccountable decision making is the basis of corruption.
Would Apple's waiver have been approved if Apple handed Trump some PR wins in the form of vaporware [theverge.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
It’s obvious I’m not a Trump supporter, but - Apple’s argument for tariff relief seems pretty weak. Of COURSE you can only get those parts in China... because you basically set the supply chain up that way!
Trump is smart, we'll just reimburse everyone for the extra costs once we get China's tariff checks in the mail, because China is paying for the tariffs, that's what people say anyway, I don't know.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm a Trump supporter and a supporter of all politics that advance individual wealth and freedom.
Start by justifying your support with inoffensive sounding objectives but never bother with specific policies to achieve them.
Hopefully the President and the Trump Administration will take it further in 2020 after the elections and severely limit all types of work visas, especially the infamous H1-B scheme. That will definitely put a lid on big tech interference into our politics, because there are not nearly enough leftists in existence to fill the voids left by all the Indians and Pakistanis sent home as a result.
Finish by proposing specific policies meant to remove two specific groups of brown people from the US.
There's a reason why Trump supporters get associated with White Supremacy.
They simply can't do it! (Score:1)
There are no other sources for these proprietary parts, because Apple doesn't manufacture them in the US.
Because that would mean:
1. Having to work through all the red tape of the so-called "Environmental Protection Agency" and paying preposterous sums of money to appease these environmental regulations that are meant to curb most economic activity in the US
2. Having to pay far higher wages and salaries for workers, employees and contractors including FICA taxes.
3. Causing white people to have income when th
Well... (Score:1)
I hate Trump and I prefer Apple products, but I support this. Apple, like many other companies want to betray the American worker by shipping their jobs overseas. Fuck that, let them pay.
Re: (Score:1)
Fuck that, let them pay.
Oh they will pay, but not in the way you want them to. See, it's probably still cheaper to just give shitloads of money to the Democrats than bankrolling some domestic factory to make these dumb parts. Now you know why Joe Biden is shaping up to be the establishment favorite. "Nothing will fundamentally change" is a dog whistle to the wealthy who have been screwed over by Trump's policies.
way to go trump (Score:2)
No sympathy whatsoever (Score:2)
I write this on a Mac, but I have no sympathy for Apple whatsoever. When your computers are priced like midsize cars, I'm sure you can afford to pay US workers to assemble them if you don't like tariffs, or you could pay with that fat 40% margin of yours if you want to make them in China regardless.
Question (Score:2)
If the con artist is so intent on companies making products in this country, why doesn't he have his name brand clothes, currently manufactured in China, made here?
If Apple is supposed to make electronics which require massive manufacturing processes and vast supply chains, why can't a simple shirt be made here?
Shouldn't he be leading by example rather than making excuses?
Re: (Score:2)
"Shouldn't he be leading by example rather than making excuses?" I appreciate the sentiment but Trump doesn't have it in him to lead by example and making excuses is his go-to response for being a perpetual screwup. I presume his bankruptcies were caused by Hillary.
as they say, history repeats itself (Score:2)
There was a time, not long ago where China was the worlds sole superpower, far ahead of any other nation.
Then they got this idea in their mind that the world is full of "heathens", and trading should only benefit China, and everyone needs to pay tribute to them.
They burned their ocean fleat, closed their doors to the world.. and imploded. While they sat there thinking about how superiour they are, the world surpassed them.
By the time Trump is done with his Tarrif's, who will be left to trade with?
Apple Can Afford the Cut in Profits (Score:3)
Tim Cook openly hates the Trump Administration, but has made several visits with the President, no doubt to continually negotiate for better trade with China and waivers on tariffs.
Apple's hardware already bears a high price. They can't raise them much higher or else they won't sell. Perhaps Apple will have to accept a smaller profit to build them and just eat that as a cost of doing business.
The gravy train of feeding the Chinese economy and not America's is over, Apple. Sorry.
Sincerely,
A guy that owns an iPhone, wears an Apple Watch, uses Air Pods, and is typing this on a MacBook Pro.