Trump to Apple: 'Make your products' in the US to avoid tariffs | Hacker News Reader

Trump to Apple: 'Make your products' in the US to avoid tariffs

thehill.com

32 pointskiyanwang45 comments

I remember reading a story about the manufacturing and shipping of the first iPhone. Late into the process, Steve Jobs threw a (justified) fit over the fact that the screen was to be made of plastic. He (rightly) complained that people would be putting the phone in their pockets with their keys, and the thing would be scratched up in no time. This, he declared, would not do.

So, what happened next, in short, is that the Chinese factory was contacted and—in order to keep to schedule, which Apple refused to change—the foremen woke up all the line workers, who were asleep in their company provided dormitories, roused them out of bed, told them that there was time enough to get dressed and have a quick cup of tea, after which they would have to get their selves onto the assembly line and start work immediately, as there had been a big change.

This is not going to happen in the United States—ever. And this, above all else, is a big reason why companies want to use Chinese manufacturing.

I share this only to raise the point that we live in interesting times, and they're about to get even more interesting.

Of course, reasonable schedule changes for last minute changes would have also solved this problem.

Yes, for people interested in solving problems this way.

Don't get me wrong! I am not cheering on this sort of thing. It's almost Dickensian, and I am no socialist—not by a mile.

"This is not going to happen in the United States—ever."

This should happen in medical/military/civic emergency situations, not in making commodity consumer crap.

I have no problem indicating I think Trump is a dupe, but he's a little bit right here.

Some innovation in manufacturing + some employment in under-employed areas would work in America.

If people are allowed to have the 'vision' that we can have electric cars or put people on the moon, they should be able to aspire to intelligent manufacturing developing in the West.

Horrible that a work force essentially kept in company camps can be woken in the night to get back to work because a higher-up decided to change something obvious last-second.

I would hope this would not happen in 'Merica.

Well, they’re from villages all across China. They need somewhere to live and it might as well not have a commute.

Nearly every large employer in China has employee housing of some sort, including government agencies. Every single manufacturer has dorms.

I think the issue is more that the employees are on-call 24/7. On-site housing is just a way to make that happen.

I used to work for a catering hall that was, decades ago, a resort. The cottages on the property, that once used to house guests, housed the (illegal alien) kitchen workers. The owner (and his managers) used to wake everyone up and get them into the kitchen, unexpectedly, if something went wrong—which might mean only management's planning.

It cannot be ignored that—however convenient it may be for workers—the arrangement is easy for management to abuse.

Company dorms were a thing when the U.S. started to industrialize. People come off the farms and in to industrial areas, they know nobody, and they don't have two nickels to rub together. So, they got put up in dorms.

Glass screen was in no way obvious in 2006.

> This is not going to happen in the United States—ever. And this, above all else, is a big reason why companies want to use Chinese manufacturing.

You can't always get what you want, even if you are a rich American company. And Steve Jobs was a tyrant, he should've known well ahead of time that the screen was made of plastic.

By now the Chinese are going to have a lot of modern high-tech mass-market manufacturing know-how that is likely lacking severely in the United States. Not to mention the logistics of building that kind of supply chain from zero and overnight, or the fact that 95% of the world's rare-earths originate from China - many of which are necessary to build iPhones etc.

Good luck with moving all that to the US!

In and around 2004 the largest and most productive cell phone factory in the world was in DFW, TX (Nokia).

I'm sure it wouldn't be an issue to do that again with the right amount of funding. It's interesting to me that people think that doing this is impossible or so difficult that it is nearly impossible.

Anything is possible.

What will be cheaper: Tariffs or "the right amount of funding"? I'm guessing tariffs will still be far less expensive than ramping up US-based manufacturing that can cover all the components/labor that was sourced in China. Long run, it might pay off, but you're betting that the next president (or even the current unpredictable president) won't go and roll back the tariffs before the investment has paid off.

The supply chain issue is not rocket science we already do that with cars.

Rare-earths are not actually rare.

The know-how is kind of a problem, but it's really the cheap labour, the zero rights they have (i.e. work now for 12 hours a day no bathroom break), the externalization of things like pollution etc..

It's possible to move most of that to the US ... but it would be complex and expensive. There's no reason to do it today.

Reducing dependency on an exploitative, rights-abusing, polluter nation seems like a good reason to do it today?

Of course it does, I was being cynical about 'no need'. This is the position of big business and free traders.

Trump is right on some level to want to bring some manufacturing home, I just don't think he's smart enough to consider how, what or why.

The bigger issue for the US is that other countries will also want their shit made in their countries.

Apple isn’t worried about shifting manufacturing to the US. Apple is worried that China will want iPhones sold to the Chinese made in China, India will want iPhones sold to Indians made in India, Europe will want iPhones sold to Europeans made in Europe and so on.

The problem for the US with these demands is that most countries want to step away from globalization, and the US has been the greatest promoter of it, precisely because it had, has, and likely will continue to be the greatest beneficiary of globalization. Trump doesn’t seem to realize this.

Why would a Russian want to pay more money for an iPhone so an American instead of a Chinese could get a job?

China has been the biggest beneficiary of globalization.

I'm not sure that it's that bad. The US was the manufacturing leader for decades. China has been the leader only in the past 2. I'm sure the US can take the lead again. What is needed is for the US shareholders to go back to the basics of building and investing in a medium-term company (long-term would be too much to ask at this point).

Yes, so let China have it and let’s not manufacture anything. What could possibly go wrong.

>"It is difficult to see how tariffs that hurt U.S. companies and U.S. consumers will advance the Government's objectives with respect to China's technology policies," Apple

Wow. Then they are not trying very hard. The tariffs put pressure on China’s supply chain. Too expensive in China, then manufacturing to Vietnam hurting the Chinese economy. Let’s remember nothing has worked with China before.

We talk about low consumer prices like this should dictate all of our policies but who cares about low prices on electronic goods if you don’t have jobs to pay for housing, education, and food.

An article I read about those tariffs, but I don't remember where, raised an interesting point: even if they wanted to, how are Apple, and other companies, supposed to find the millions of workers this would require, when unemployment is rather low?

Robots?

It will sure be interesting to see if they go through with this, or if Apple will keep making their devices in factories with suicide prevention fences.

And meanwhile Trump raised tariffs on intermediate products not final products.

For those not following this: taxing intermediate products and raw materials encourages more outsourcing since it makes it cheaper to just offshore everything.

Yes, I run a small synthesizer company on the side and do our own assembly, which has become 30% more expensive because the tarrifs cover things like capacitors, resistors, potentiometers, which are all components for our products.

We've always done our own assembly to ensure quality, and to reduce costs... But now because of these tarrifs we are considering shutting down or possibly off-shoring assembly.

Oh cool, which company?

That's insane.

This reminds me of how Hynix was able to bypass the anti-dumping tariffs in 2003-2008, partly by using the Eugene, Oregon and later Wuxi, China fabs.

One likely scenario if Trump continues to get his way is that we’re going to see a generational downturn. Such a thing has been a normal, healthy part of our economy historically. Perhaps we will see five years of a nasty bear market which we have not seen in a long time. It will be the buying opportunity of a lifetime.

The new reality of America first will require a serious growing pains. Such as Apple and other companies fundamentally thinking how they approach manufacturing

Our generational downturn is already being caused by housing policy and the highly wasteful healthcare and education sectors. Bringing some manufacturing in-house won't do anything on that scale.

There’s no such downturn yet

Well, you might want to look at the age people are having kids in some parts of the country.

I don't understand why Congress doesn't Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 1 Trump into line. The president should not have unlimited, unchecked power to do anything by just appending "because national security" to an executive order.

You're right, but Congress has been essentially deadlocked into a completely nonfunctional body for years now. On top of that, the republicans necessary to curb trumps power are extremely afraid of his appeal in their base, that they'll lose their seats due to not being either on his side, or being enough like him.

He's letting the GOP, which controls congress, mostly get what they want, so it wouldn't make any sense to cut him off. In addition his popularity among their base is still quite high, so again, why cut him off.

(Nothing in the above statement above should be taken to imply that I oppose or support any member of the legislative or executive branches.)

Congress likes to be able to abdicate their responsibility and just pass it on to the president.

Realistically, if Trump truly had unlimited, unchecked power, immigrant slave labor would be building The Wall across the Mexican border as we speak.

Google to Apple: Don't cave. This moron will be out of office before the end of the year.

It wont be that soon.

Rejoice fellow americans: Trump is the proof you have a solid democracy with strong institutions. Russia messing around and mingling on everything and you still manage to stay on top. Kudos for you, with a little jealousy, because I am Brazilian, and we remove presidents every once in a while (twice since I started voting). For MUCH less.

That's what we thought last year.

Because of his age, or the possibility of being impeached?

Sadly, I expect to see Old Man Orange still spouting the same rhetoric in 2020.

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