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Apple Not Allowed To Open Stores In India (reuters.com)
ffkom writes: Reuters reports: "India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters. A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, which states 30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India. However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter." Now just imagine what Apple stores in the U.S. would look like if 30% of their offerings had to be made in the US... "They did ask for a waiver but didn't provide any material on record to justify it. The decision was taken only after a thorough examination of their application," the source said. Apple planned to open at least three stores in India by the end of 2017. Separate sources said Apple talked with the Indian government about a relaxation of the rule before it filed an application to open stores in the country in January. In a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled), one of India's government officials said, "We are sticking to the old policy. We want local sourcing for job creation. You can't have a situation where people view India only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here." Currently, Apple sells its products "through a network of Indian-owned distribution companies and retailers."
Apple will open its wallet and everything will change. Indian bureaucrats and officials care about one thing: bribe money.
http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/09/foxconn-india-iphone-manufacturing/
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
They didn't do the needful.
Indeed, just like the protectionism of the Florida sugar growers led to corn syrup in everything and protectionism of steel led to both heavy industry moving offshore and a steel industry that failed to innovate.
It happens a lot, even where you are sitting, is often stupid and can have unintended consequences.
30% of the VALUE of goods sold. If it was just numbers they could stock a few hundred locally made iPhone covers to meet the rules
You are ignoring the fact that India was colonized and used as nothing but as a market for centuries and sucked dry. Those scars will take a long while to heal and those are lessons not easily forgotten. The word "Free Trade" has a different meaning to an Indian (as well as to those who also endured the Opium Wars and the Black Ships incident in their history). They had completely different experiences with it in their history. This is a rational strategy from those experiences.
Likewise the idea of protectionism has cold war era connotations in US; not so in India. It was a necessarily strategy for India to protect itself from neo-colonialism when its capacity to compete was never allowed to mature. India started rolling back these defenses (which naturally hold back growth - security vs. speed) gradually once it felt its industries and services are maturing and have a chance to actually compete in a free market. But that is a gradual process rather than a binary choice.
> Why should the people of one country be privileged over the people of any other? Just because they were born there?
That said, I generally agree with the sentiment. But even the majority in US don't agree with that.
Well I'm not sure what a "good lying job" is, but ... solution my ass. India is a huge exporter and makes lots of money out of selling things overseas, but they don't want imported goods sold in their own country? If other countries adopted this kind of measure, India would suffer more than most countries.
Where did it say they don't want imported goods. What I read was if a foreign company wants to set up shop 30% of value of the goods needs to be made in india. Seems fair enough to me, as it stands every apple store has almost 100% of the value of products made in china.
Why do you think it's ok to abuse the shit out the world like that? These guys over here will work for nothing so we can slave them, then take the product and sell it for way way more than it cost to make over to these guys who have lots of money (but not for long because all the jobs are being fucked off overseas because it cheaper.) Meanwhile we're taking in all the money from underpaying and overcharging. If you really want a global market then a person in chinatown, china needs to get paid the same as a person in bumsville, usa or ruskigrad, russia etc and the product should cost the same no matter where you go. But they don't do they? They abuse the system from all sides making their huge pile of money huger and by extension making everyone else poorer. Fuck this so called 'globalism'.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I live in Argentina. We tried this experiment over the past 12 years. You know what happened? We still got imported products, by a company that hired people to put these products in a box and slap a "INDUSTRIA ARGENTINA" sticker on them. And charging 300% more than what the same product costs outside the country.
Protectionism is also abused by those protected by it, to keep the status quo.
> sucked dry
The only thing sucking India dry is the corruption, where one looks to go into government so one can earn a nice life demanding kickbacks.
This puts the brakes on economic development as surely as mafia kickbacks, warlordism, and kings demanding cuts and permission to do anything does.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The usual answer is a blunt "comparative advantage" or "economists have shown protectionism is bad", which, such as it is, basically implies you or the person arguing with you is too dumb to understand, thus fall back to buzzwords. Let's go with a more complete explanation.
Let's say a producer in Maine can produce 8 tonnes of potato per acre, and 2 tonnes of melon per acre. A producer in Mexico can produce 8 tonnes of melon per acre, and 2 tonnes of potato per acre. The farm management techniques are similar, and so the costs are basically the same per acreage; thus melon costs 4 times as much to produce in Maine, and potato costs 4 times as much to produce in Mexico.
So the guys in Maine normally produce potato for $100/tonne and melon for $400/tonne using 5 acres of land for 8 tonnes of each; while the guys in Mexico produce melon for $100/tonne and potato for $400/tonne using 5 acres of land for 8 tonnes of each. That's a lot of wasted money (read: human labor time) and land.
So the guys in Maine instead produce 16 tonnes of potato on 2 acres of land at a price of $100/tonne; the guys in Mexico produce 16 tonnes of melon on 2 acres of land at a price of $100/tonne. It costs about $1,000 to ship 30 tonnes of freight, so these people trade and Mexico ends up with potato at $133/tonne, while Maine ends up with Melon at $133/tonne.
Each side now has 60% of the land involved in producing 8 tonnes each potato and melon, and has reclaimed 60% of the labor (unemployment). As well, there is $66 per tonne or approximately 75% of the money unspent by the consumer base purchasing these products.
Most people miss this next part.
With that additional money, the consumers can now buy more products--including foreign imports, recycling the above process. Those products must be moved (shipping), accounted for (logistics), distributed (warehousing), and sold (retail), meaning the supply chain of melons, jeans, or cheap mechanical pencils creates a *lot* of local jobs (your local WalMart has a district manager under a regional manager; it has regional warehouses to stage goods for distribution across the district; and of course all those stores and the inventory, security, management, and service employees), paid for by the money saved via importing.
In short: the labor freed up from the farm is repurposed. Maybe we start a manufacturing base (this happened after America's labor force started using intensive farming techniques and machines, cutting from 90% of the work force to today's ~2%). Maybe that gets shipped to China and we make more doctors and stuff like Netflix and cell phone networks. Maybe we just make more food. In any case, for the same labor and the same number of jobs, we end up with MORE STUFF.
You might also notice: food is suddenly cheaper, since we're making 2.5 times as much for the same cost investment. Imagine it takes half the labor to produce all the goods you currently consumer--that means half the wages paid down the whole stack (right down to the coal miners), thus the same profit margins at half the PRICE. Your money can buy twice as much, so long as your wages aren't slashed, right? In this case, we haven't slashed hourly wages; we've slashed number of hours required to make a thing: one guy working for $10/hr still works 40 hours, and the other guy goes to do some other job; the things they both make cost half as much, and you can buy both of them, and support both their salaries.
So you ask:
How is "thinking globally" going to help me, Joe Random Small Person?
Globalization increases wealth and creates jobs. I've done some *weak* analysis on a scenario in which the United States blockades China and brings all manufacture back to the U.S., and the result is people become *much* poorer on an individual basis (the people making Comcast High Speed Internet, T-Mobile's 4G network, and Netflix need to stop doing that and go work in these factories--we don't have the labor for
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