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Comment by diebeforei485 | Hacker News Reader

Apple is basically building redundancy into its supply chain here. Just in case they are cut off from China, they will be able to set up final assembly elsewhere and will already have supply of the critical parts.

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Mexico is becoming the new China for manufacturing. Even many Chinese companies are building factories there. Also recently Mexico is offering work visas for workers from central America. Check out this Wendover video on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXT46osICdY

they are just using Mexico as a way to get around tariffs and other trade restrictions. On paper it might say "Mexico" is the biggest trade partner for the US, but the reality all the stuff is still coming from China with an extra hop to do final assembly in Mexico. China is doing the same thing with manufacturing in Vietnam, all the money still flows back to China in the end

Mexico has none of the actual infrastructure or skilled workforce needed to be an actual manufacturing powerhouse that makes things from scratch

> China is doing the same thing with manufacturing in Vietnam, all the money still flows back to China in the end

Eh they do a lot in Vietnam in reality. And yeah Chinese own a lot of these factories directly or indirectly, but a lot of the money (and the toxic fumes) stays in Vietnam.

"Mexico has none of the actual infrastructure or skilled workforce needed to be an actual manufacturing powerhouse that makes things from scratch"

What people forget is that starting with assembly is one of the basic things needed to get a leg-in into ramping up into a manufacturing powerhouse.

Isn't this how china got its start in tech in the 90s? all the "smart" people were in US/western countries and they just used china as a final assembly spot. but in doing so gave china the access to all the cool stuff, which they used to learn about it and build it themselves.

> Mexico has none of the actual infrastructure or skilled workforce needed to be an actual manufacturing powerhouse

Care to share your sources?

What does the Vietnam hop enable, India?

And Apple did the same thing when Cook prostrated himself before Trump pretending like “Macs were being manufactured in America” when it was actually only a few Mac Pros and they were doing final assembly here.

Wasn't Mexico like that in the '90s? I remember GPUs, ThinkPads and a lot of PC hardware were made in Mexico back then.

And then suddenly, as if overnight, everything moved to China.

Yes. Mexico was a manufacturing powerhouse until PNTR shifted all of that to China.

[0] - https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_normal_trade_relatio...

That is true. But now China is getting expensive and the population is getting older fast and the Chinese leadership is getting less predicable. Mexico meanwhile is much younger and labor cost is lower than China. Its a neighboring country and part of a free trade agreement. Canada and Mexico now at par with China in their total trade with US. The threat of future pandemic and global conflicts and their impact on supply chains has made companies more cautious. Its of just offshoring, its instead onshoring, nearshoring or friendshoring. A lot of the stuff onshoring will be higher value or those of national security or highly automatable.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/us-largest-trading-partners...

Doesn’t matter. It’s a cultural thing. Mexico can get as young as they like. Won’t matter. Look at the work culture in China vs Mexico. That’s where all the answers lie.

Yep. https://www.wired.com/2001/11/flex/

> Mexico is becoming the new China for manufacturing.

Yes, people claimed that during the era of the maquiladoras... it has not materialized 30 years after.

With Biden repeatedly threatening to invade China and destroy the factories in Taiwan, it's clear Apple is just making sure they have a good fallback plan.

> With Biden repeatedly threatening to invade China

Has he actually said invade China?

The most the US has said was when China invades Taiwan, the US will defend them.

> Has he actually said invade China?

No. Even with moronically-generous parsing, where Taiwan is considered part of China, there is no U.S. policy of invading Taiwan.

You have to parse through the rhetorical dishonesty to understand the meaning. In the mind of the radicalized Chinese nationalist, Taiwan is China (remember, they do not give a damn what the people inside Taiwan actually want, those people don't matter), so if Biden says that he will defend Taiwan if it gets invaded, that is equivalent in the mind of the nationalist to Biden saying he'll invade China.

"In the mind of the radicalized Chinese nationalist, Taiwan is China "

Acknowledged formally by the US also. The United States One-China policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972: "the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China".

Americans appear to be very eager to forget this for some reason. Sure the US can decide that the Shanghai Communiqué is no longer since China is now becoming a super-power - but it should at-least be recognized that breaking this effectively means a full-fledged War with a near peer military power. No one in the US should pretend to be surprised about it.

The UN also thinks Taiwan is China.

"UN" does not think more than building does not think. It's an entity for countries to talk.