Apple Suppliers Are Racing To Exit China, AirPods Maker Says (bloomberg.com) 65
Apple's Chinese suppliers are likely to move capacity out of the country far faster than many observers anticipate to pre-empt fallout from escalating Beijing-Washington tensions, according to one of the US company's most important partners. From a report: AirPods maker GoerTek is one of the many manufacturers exploring locations beyond its native China, which today cranks out the bulk of the world's gadgets from iPhones to PlayStations. It's investing an initial $280 million in a new Vietnam plant while considering an India expansion, Deputy Chairman Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga said in an interview. US tech companies in particular have been pushing hard for manufacturers like GoerTek to explore alternative locations, said the executive, who oversees GoerTek's Vietnamese operations from northern Bac Ninh province.
"Starting from last month, so many people from the client side are visiting us almost every day," Yoshinaga said from his offices at GoerTek's sprawling industrial complex north of Hanoi. The topic that dominates discussions: "When can you move out?" The expanding conflict between the US and China, which began with a trade war but has since expanded to encompass sweeping bans on the exchange of chips and capital, is spurring a rethink of the electronics industry's decades-old supply chain. The world's reliance on the Asian nation became starkly clear during the Covid Zero years, when Beijing's restrictions choked off the supply of everything from phones to cars.
"Starting from last month, so many people from the client side are visiting us almost every day," Yoshinaga said from his offices at GoerTek's sprawling industrial complex north of Hanoi. The topic that dominates discussions: "When can you move out?" The expanding conflict between the US and China, which began with a trade war but has since expanded to encompass sweeping bans on the exchange of chips and capital, is spurring a rethink of the electronics industry's decades-old supply chain. The world's reliance on the Asian nation became starkly clear during the Covid Zero years, when Beijing's restrictions choked off the supply of everything from phones to cars.
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Escape Communism.. (Score:2, Funny)
go to Vietnam?
Re: Escape Communism.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Escape Communism.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the wealthy refuse to invest their money in new businesses that employ people and consequently pay them so they can afford to exist, then either a wealth tax or an economic collapse is inevitable.
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If the wealthy refuse to invest their money in new businesses that employ people and consequently pay them so they can afford to exist, then either a wealth tax or an economic collapse is inevitable.
This is America! We'll do both! And do it better than anyone else ever has!
Oh, wait, hang on. Need to recalibrate the brag generator.
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We do not have a hoarding problem because returns are high. Interest rates are also high
Re: Escape Communism.. (Score:4, Informative)
The investments have to actually employ people, not just be vehicles for hiding money and moving it around, or the pyramid collapses as its base is eroded. And we know that's the case because the mass layoffs proceed even as the rich get richer.
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The economy is really going through some contortions, between Covid changing buying needs both temporarily and long-term in different ways, and some unwinding of globalization. That ultimately requires people to stop doing certain jobs and do other jobs. If companies were handcuffed from hiring and firing it would lead to disaster.
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you know that low unemployment number has been massaged and modified over the years to be lower and lower. Also how they collect the data has also help managed to make that number look lower.
And while unemployment seams low, companies are not willing to pay more to get the employees, and they are not willing to put money down train either.
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Re: Escape Communism.. (Score:2)
I have record number of applicants to any job I post. I think too many people have been out of the workforce too long to be counted as unemployed. During COVID, people making under $50k would make more on unemployment and the government kept that train running, after COVID few companies had money to rehire and most are still looking at cuts to avoid the 10% year-over-year inflation in overall costs.
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Besides the official stats, I have lived through periods of high unemployment and this is not one of them.
Because you have a job? Try looking around you [cnet.com].
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Look you can always find a pity piece to meet the market demand for people who need to be constantly reassured that everything is as bad as they have always felt and will always feel that it is.
But there's nothing in the article you linked to establish that unemployment is currently high compared to anything it has ever been before.
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Soon there will be a wealth tax
Oh no, rich people paying more taxes than the middle class? We certainly can't have that.
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Congrats on your promotion to having your own stalker. Salute!
Re: Escape Communism.. (Score:1)
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Funny how they generally use the same methods. Remember, it's best to drive *on* the road.
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A wealth tax would require a constitutional amendment, requiring approval by 75% of state legislatures.
Chance of that happening: 0%.
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A wealth tax would require a constitutional amendment....
Why do you think that? Congress has a nearly unlimited taxation power. It would require only an act of Congress to tax wealth.
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Nevermind. It would be required in order to get around the apportionment requirement.
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Oh, we could totally keep apportionment and still have a wealth tax, and still have it all nice and constitiutional. It's not the constitution stopping it at all. All the US would have to do is not go on screwing over California and New York by having us pay even more than our fair share of the taxes and receiving less than out share of federal momey and services in return. That means, of course, that the republicans will never in a million years go for it because fuck us "costal libtards" and any concep
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The false belief that Democrats subsidize Republicans is an example of Simpson's paradox [wikipedia.org].
Yes, blue states pay more in taxes and receive less in benefits than red states. But blue states contain plenty of Republicans and red states contain plenty of Democrats.
Republicans in blue states tend to be richer than Republicans in red states. Democrats in red states are poorer than Democrats in blue states.
So what is really happening is that rich Republicans in blue states are supporting poor Democrats in red states
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You might be confusing cause and effect. As people get wealthier they tend to become more conservative, because conservative policies protect their wealth. People who don't have much wealth tend to be more left leaning, because they can see how they are getting screwed by those conservative policies, and want politicians who will at least try to help them.
Of course it's not universally true and there are many exceptions.
The other thing to look at is wealth disparity. The average may be higher, but that can
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The problem here is that you assume millionaires in blue states are overwhelmingly Republican
No, not "overwhelmingly". But disproportionately they are. People are more likely to vote Republican as their incomes rise.
Political affiliation by household income [pewresearch.org]
while blue collar workers in red states are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.
No. Not at all. Recipients of government assistance are not "blue-collar workers."
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In that reality, the Government wouldn't stop you from using the toilet, but you'd have to pay a fee to ToiletCo every time you wanted to use it.
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The similarity is they are both left wing center control concepts. Just different fascists of civilization. One economic ideology. The other political ideology.
Hmm, fascism is far-right [wikipedia.org]. Communism is considered left-wing.
It's fascinating and, I suppose, mutually repugnant that far-right American/European groups have quite a bit in common with ostensibly Communist China.
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Re:Escape .. (Score:2)
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What in God's green earth (Score:1)
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The Good Lord giveth, and the Good Lord taketh away.
Re: Tesla expanding in China (Score:2)
What's the difference? (Score:2)
What's the difference between buying parts from a Chinese company made in China versus buying them from a Chinese company made somewhere else? You're still buying them from a Chinese company...
Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the C-Suite? There is likely little difference.
However, the latter can be used as political leverage, draining jobs away from a growing labor population and applying some pressure to the Chinese government both internally as well as externally.
It also reduces the manufacturing capabilities in terms of functioning facilities and the talent to operate them within China's borders, potentially removing your adversary's options (politically, militarily, etc.). Perhaps less so for current technologies, but could have a huge long-term affect on newer and as-yet-undiscovered tech. Playing against China in the short-term is a losing proposition akin to playing chess (or Go?) one move at a time. They appear to take a much longer view. Losing a few manufacturers here and there is likely not important to them. Losing nascent industries or ones that have to materialize is a much larger concern.
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One is the supporting ecosystem: subcontractors, component and equipment suppliers, suitably skilled/experienced labor, etc. that grows up in the vicinity of sufficient manufacturing activity regardless of who owns the most notable manufacturers(unless they go to great pains to exclusively use expats to process stuff shipped in from outside and otherwise avoid local entanglements to a degree that goes beyond mere economic incentives). If they move the man
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One difference is where the paychecks are spent and income tax is paid.
If a shooting war should ever break out (I hope not), you will see larger differences. For example China is going to have a hard time repossessing all the farmland they bought in the midwest USA.
https://norman.house.gov/news/... [house.gov]
Rotfl (Score:2)
Deputy Chairman Yoshinaga?
Dude sounds seriously chineseâ¦not.
All this bullshit around asian manufacturing is obviously part of some kind of foreign policy move by Washington. For any individual consumer to think they have some kind of substantive opinion about this because of their strongly held personal beliefs, they should stop kidding themselves.
This stuff is bullshit meant to inflame American voters and feed the news cycle.
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For any individual consumer to think they have some kind of substantive opinion about this because of their strongly held personal beliefs, they should stop kidding themselves.
Thanks for telling us that your opinion is worthless, individual consumer. Now we can disregard everything else you wrote.
A VERY misleading headline. (Score:1)
Re:A VERY misleading headline. (Score:4, Interesting)
the CCP can shutdown these new plants in Vietnam or India with a single sentence.
You say that. But what if the plant managers don't obey, don't shut down, and just form a new company in Vietnam, cutting out the Chinese owners?
Plants moving out of China means that China loses the physical and operating plant, the workers, and the expertise. And in a bad scenario, they lose control of the plant and also the profits.
The CCP will let only a limited amount of high tech manufacturing out of their direct control. They will only risk losing profits. Meanwhile, the Americans will happily pay the Chinese by writing checks to Vietnamese bank accounts. The USA gets to say that human rights of the laborers are better, and feel better about at least some factories being outside of Chinese shutdowns.
Unless the manufacturing actually takes place on US soil, and is scalable for when we go to an actual cold war with China, there's a national security problem. Which is why we just allocated a trillion dollars to improve domestic chip manufacturing.
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Then China will tell the Vietnamese government to shut down the business. Vietnam isn't exactly high on the list of countries with ethical standards. They'll find some excuse to shut the plant down, especially with China being their largest trading partner.
Witness how India raided the BBC office [cnn.com] a while back when the BBC broadcast a documentary critical
Re:A VERY misleading headline. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then China will tell the Vietnamese government to shut down the business. Vietnam isn't exactly high on the list of countries with ethical standards. They'll find some excuse to shut the plant down, especially with China being their largest trading partner.
It will be interesting to see how the economics play out. As higher tech manufacturing takes hold in Vietnam, the value of non-Chinese customers will increase and Vietnamese leadership may decide not to let Beijing dictate what to do; especially since the factories are now on their soil and employing their citizens.
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"Then China will tell the Vietnamese government to shut down the business. Vietnam isn't exactly high on the list of countries with ethical standards"
Vietnam is very high on the list of countries willing to tell China to fuck off. How may other nations have defeated both the US and China in war?
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The factories in China probably won't close or lose all their talent. They will switch to making other products. Apple quality and know-how, available to other brands, in other markets.
Does it matter? (Score:1)
China exporting jobs already? (Score:2)
Perhaps the reason is cost of conducting the business? As in the saying "if you cant explain it it is likely the moneys".
Remember when nothing was made in China? (Score:2)
Almost nothing was made in China until the mid 90s and it was great. I enjoyed visiting suppliers in Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan, even a filthy sh*t-hole called the USA. It only took roughly 10yrs for almost all manufacturing to move to China (and me with it, sadly). F*ck the CCP - they have decided to become an enemy to the entire world. We moved all of our supply chain out of China already.
Anywhere but USA (Score:1)
USA companies will move its production to any populous and poor country, but the USA itself.
That's why when people complain to me about China, I always remember them that China didn't become the industrial behemot it is today without the huge help of USA and its partners.
Case is, when it comes to scaling up, paying the lowest wages possible and making huge amounts of money, even the most patriotic, religious and conservative people in the western hemisphere won't see any problem in moving production to ideo
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