Comment by chollida1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chollida1 | Hacker News Reader

Smart move by both Apple and Foxconn.

Having your manufacturing based in one country isn't a good idea in terms of risk management.

Natural disasters, shipping delays, or presidential will could shut down production pretty quickly.

Trump will be very quick to use this as a point to show he was correct. I'd expect Foxconn to get some very good concessions out of this. SoftBank's Masayoshi continues to amaze me. Instead of talking tough about Trump's local manufacturing bluster, he quickly accepted it and started deal making with this new reality.

I'm no political expert but Id' be very surprised if Trump doesn't start picking fights with other governments about manufacturing jobs and tariffs. Companies and supply chains who don't anticipate this are going to be in for a rough 4 years.

Bloomberg's SPLC<GO> function is going to get alot more use in the coming days/weeks as people start to map out who is bring jobs back to America and who is standing firm:)

I seriously doubt that a large Japanese multinational made a $50B decision in the last 4 weeks.

Masayoshi smartly saw that with some spin, he can hold a press conference with Trump and get some goodies for something they were going to do anyways. Smart guy. Your tax dollars at work.

I think we are in 100% agreement.

> Your tax dollars at work.

I'm not an American:)

I still feel like I'm missing something. It's not just the fact that it's going to be more labor expensive (after all, the yuan has fell a lot recently), but that the entire supply chain is in China, so if you produce in the US you'll be forced to hold lots of inventories.

Or is this some BS from Foxconn just to keep Trump happy? Sure, agree to invest, make plans, delay it as much as possible, etc.

Edit: or is it a move by Softbank to get the Sprint-TMobile merger approved?

"Son is no stranger to grand goals, even if he hasn’t always delivered. He planned to combine Sprint, the No. 4 U.S. wireless operator, with its next rival T-Mobile US Inc. only to be thwarted by regulators. "

I have trouble believing that a Sprint-TMUS merger wasn't discussed if they were in the same room. Investors are betting that TMUS is going to get some offers within the next year.

TMUS is up 16% since the election vs the S&P500 at 5%.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATMUS&ei=eoRIWNnNIs...

The telecom sector in general is soaring on M&A speculation.

> Natural disasters

One recent example was flooding in Thailand that really hit the hard drive market hard.

The problem is that these aren't high paying jobs likely like those in actual semiconductor fabrication. Plus, Foxconn already utilizes robots in the majority of it's facilities so you're not going to get much out of this as they continue the process of automation throughout their production processes. Expect some jobs, but most of them will be always replaceable with machines. All that's happened here is Trump got played by Foxconn.

Do you happen to know what jobs and/or training happens to support the robots?

Those jobs are at least one magnitude less in number than the typical assembler/packer job. They also require much more skills so I expect them to pay but that's not enough to offset the losses. Either way, these aren't good paying jobs like being a sander, painter, chem-treat, or CNC operator at an aircraft plant.

True, but I'm still wondering what an actual "robot technician" job training looks like.

The details of the plan are not released, how can Trump get "played" by Foxconn. You don't even know the deal. And even if they don't create any jobs, they still are investing and contributing tax dollars to the country. Could you explain why that is a bad thing?

He was played for two reasons.

1. It's likely Foxconn had already decided this well in advance of the 2016 election cycle. So him winning the election and this projected deal aren't related.

2. Even if him winning the election may have affected the decision it's still not him doing this, it's Foxconn. And the fact he's promoting this deal makes him the stooge for Foxconn. All he did was give them free PR (I hope his advisors told him that). So for a man who claims to have good business sense he basically did something for free.

3. The tax dollars don't matter, it's the fact Trump is like the soupstone guy from the fable. He didn't contribute anything. He produced exactly no value here.

I've been in many electronics factories, including ones used by Apple. There is still a lot of human labor. When people talk about robots replacing people in these factories, they aren't talking about robots driving screws or connecting assemblies together. Robots can do that, but many companies' demands for agile manufacturing make them hard to bring in.

I was in the factory that makes Apple Earpods. They are one of Apple's highest produced products because they ship with all their iOS devices. All the assembly was done by hand. They were proud that they added a robot to the line. Do you know what the robot did? It moved parts from one station to another station 12 feet away. They previously had a human doing that.

Nevertheless in the last 10 years factory automation has been explosive. Its not all done (or we'd have much higher unemployment) but its hurtling down that road.

Yet assembler jobs don't pay well even now here in the US. Just ask anyone who works a job at Coleman (temp or perm). It's not this panacea for employment.

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