Comment by totalZero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by totalZero | Hacker News Reader

As we increase the offshore footprint for manufacturing of devices consumed by Americans, we set ourselves up for a future where our national interests are far away, hard to defend, and subject to the whims of foreign nations. This is a strategic error.

India seems like a good counterbalance to China -- it is, after all, an adversary of China in the region. But that could change in 10 years.

Geography is important. Instead of diversifying away from our own continent, we should use the power of our consumer demand to establish high-tech manufacturing facilities in the poorer/cheaper reaches of our own continent.

We already saw the dangers of offshore production when COVID-19 hit and we were unable to provide basic necessities like patient masks and protective gowns. The lesson there is that far-away manufacturing is problematic when the global market experiences heavy shocks.

This assumes that low cost labor is the only necessary condition for an acceptable geography. Likely, it is not. Surely companies such as Apple, with their army of supply chain professionals, has given deep thought to many options, including and beyond what the armchair analysts here on HN can dream up in the 10 minutes this topic catches their fancy.

Absolutely, manufacturing requires

1. Cheap Skilled Labour (India has unskilled labour because skilled abour is expensive in India)

2. Mineral Resource (India doesn't even have anthracite deposits for steel production) leave alone oil and other minerals for manufacturing.

3. India does have a good mix of software and other Engineers.

I think the best manufacturing countries for expansion out of china are African countries which do have Unskilled labour and Mineral resources. They can hire the rest from outside.

You're not alone in this thinking. Chinese corporations have been investing heavily in Africa for quite some time now.

Ofcourse people in the game know much better than a armchair intellectual like me.

All of these things are available in spades in South America.

In reality, Apple could create a manufacturing ecosystem wherever it wants. The company has spent $100 billion on buybacks annually for several years. This year, it announced it would spend only $50 billion.

You never know who the armchair analysts are on HN, so you shouldn't judge their comments based on your own guessed perceptions of their characteristics. That's like a blind ad hominem fallacy.

But really, is the US the only market out there? Do you think Apple and Foxconn don't want to be closer to the largest markets in Asia?

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