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Trump Says He's Going To 'Get Apple To Build a Big Plant In the United States' (arstechnica.com)
In a Tuesday interview with The New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump said that he would incentivize Apple to "build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States." Ars Technica reports: Trump indicated to columnist Thomas Friedman that he is going to double-down on bringing factory jobs back to America, especially in the Rust Belt from Michigan to Pennsylvania.
FRIEDMAN: Are you worried, though, that those companies will keep their factories here, but the jobs will be replaced by robots?
TRUMP: They will, and we'll make the robots, too. [laughter]
TRUMP: It's a big thing, we'll make the robots, too. Right now we don't make the robots. We don't make anything. But we're going to. I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we're going to do that. We're going to have more factories. We can't lose 70,000 factories. Just can't do it. We're going to start making things.
Trump continued, saying that he had received a call from Apple CEO Tim Cook. As the president-elect recounted: "...and I said, 'Tim, you know, one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you're making your product right here.' He said, 'I understand that.' I said: 'I think we'll create the incentives for you, and I think you're going to do it. We're going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you'll be happy about.' But we're going for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of regulations, regulations are making it impossible. Whether you're liberal or conservative, I mean, I could sit down and show you regulations that anybody would agree are ridiculous. It's gotten to be a free-for-all. And companies can't, they can't even start up, they can't expand, they're choking." A report from Nikkei last week said that Apple is exploring the idea of making iPhones in the United States, but the company has realized that it will cost more than double to make the shiny new gadgets at home.
FRIEDMAN: Are you worried, though, that those companies will keep their factories here, but the jobs will be replaced by robots?
TRUMP: They will, and we'll make the robots, too. [laughter]
TRUMP: It's a big thing, we'll make the robots, too. Right now we don't make the robots. We don't make anything. But we're going to. I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we're going to do that. We're going to have more factories. We can't lose 70,000 factories. Just can't do it. We're going to start making things.
Trump continued, saying that he had received a call from Apple CEO Tim Cook. As the president-elect recounted: "...and I said, 'Tim, you know, one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you're making your product right here.' He said, 'I understand that.' I said: 'I think we'll create the incentives for you, and I think you're going to do it. We're going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you'll be happy about.' But we're going for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of regulations, regulations are making it impossible. Whether you're liberal or conservative, I mean, I could sit down and show you regulations that anybody would agree are ridiculous. It's gotten to be a free-for-all. And companies can't, they can't even start up, they can't expand, they're choking." A report from Nikkei last week said that Apple is exploring the idea of making iPhones in the United States, but the company has realized that it will cost more than double to make the shiny new gadgets at home.
Double the COST. It currently costs $224 to make the 7. So it would cost $448 in the U.S. (probably less actually with automation, I bet this cost estimate is assuming the same labor hours per phone). If apple collects the same profit margin and passes the cost on, the phone would cost $224 more, or about $924.
Annoying but not the end of the world and not $3000.
I'm somewhat in favor of this. Not tax incentives - I just think that plants outside the U.S. that are allowed to import without tariffs should (1) adhere to OSHA and (2) pay their workers a living wage and (3) adhere to comparable environmental regulations as the U.S.
Otherwise, it will never be possible for American manufacturers to compete if the foreign plants can be deathtraps that use slave labor and create mountains of pollution.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/20/...
1. Regulations are not created by some evil Liberul cabal in Berkeley that sits around smoking weed and drinking espressos saying, "How can we make business more difficult. Regulations arise because there is at least a few assholes who think, "If it's not illegal, then it's OK!" - even if it causes the deaths of people. So these regulations didn't come out of thin air - somewhere, they are (or were) protecting someone.
2. Corporate taxes are comparatively excessive in the US - even compared to evil Socialist European tax systems. BUT, any tax cuts means revenues will have to be made up somewhere else and let's give up on the fantasy that lowering taxes boosts the economy enough to wash out the tax cuts.
3. The stock markets are hoping that the Republican controlled government does what Republicans do best: cut taxes, spend like a motherfucker, and borrow the short falls. "Bringing manufacturing jobs back" looks like a cover for doing just that.
4. And when deficits go further through the roof, the Republicans will just blame Obama.
5. I bet Trump's imagined wealth that this will in fact happen.
It's yet another Trump hyperbolic promise with no grounds on reality. Has anyone noticed he never elaborates on the how? It is easy to promise the moon and it is, evidently, also easy for most of the population to buy it at face value alone.
Hell, i can do it as well: I'll talk with Tim Cook myself. And we'll have great, huge, American iPhone factories, with American robots - cause wee don't make anything, but we're going to. Our robots will be tremendous and we'll have 200,000 new factories putting incredibly advanced new iPhones every year. American iPhones to make America Great Again(tm)!
Classic Trumpism. What are these mythical regulations? Name something? give an example? Instead when a reporter wastes their time going over regulations they find the industry pretty on par and then Trump backpedals saying we over exaggerated what he meant and what he said was just a joke. Ugh we have to do FOUR YEARS of this nonsense? He can just say what he wants and no one's going to stop him?
Just another second banana
Corporations are not natural entities. They are created by law and they let the shareholders hide behind the corporations and not have any personal liability for anything they do in the name of the corporation. This is expensive for society. Still society allows it in return for the money they get from corporations as corporate taxes. I would support 0 tax for corporations if directors of corporations become personally liable for all decisions made by a corporation including bankruptcy so if a corporation like Trump Hotels declares bankruptcy then Donald Trump loses his right to vote and right to stand for elections. Also any consumer lawsuits against a corporation gets paid out of the personal wealth of the corporation's directors. If you dont want this then pay up for the immunity you buy using corporate taxes. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Apple are not longer selling empty status, they are selling, 'I can afford to pay for my privacy', status. Now after the spy software planted by Chinese manufacturers in phones, the only way they can really still sell you privacy is to manufacture locally under strict security controls and when you switch on your phone and log in for the first time, download and install the security and encryption software from a secure offshore location (let's go with Iceland at this time).
Apple selling you privacy unlike M$ selling your privacy, gives them a powerful marketing advantage and to make the most of that, they need to manufacture in a secure location (M$ are now pretty much stuck as being the perves of the internet spying on everyone foolish enough to trust them with anything, eww, only the poor have to sell the privacy to buy M$ shite).
So it really would not take all that much assistance to drive a marketing driven production shift, especially if they promote privacy guaranteed notebooks and desktops. The perve douche bags at M$ are really vulnerable right now as the public demand for the basic human right of privacy grows, so Apple can really stick it to them real hard right now, by marketing and promoting "selling 'you' privacy rather than selling 'your' privacy".
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The problem comes when you see people in the company start to use the company as their credit card. Don't forget, according to the US Census there are 28 million small businesses in the US. What happens when the tax burden is shifted onto the owner as he takes profit? He or she might do what I've seen others do. Use the company to pay for as much as they can and take a paltry salary.
One guy I knew took a 30K a year salary as President of his own company and was quite vocal that everyone in the company got paid more than he did so they better work their asses off in appreciation. And on paper looking at his paystub that was 100% true. But he didn't tell most people that the company rented a 2 bedroom apartment in a tower downtown for "out of town" clients that he happened to live in for free, and the company vehicle was his vehicle, and the reason he would take staff out to dinner to chat was so the company would pay for dinner as a business expense, business trips to Europe coincidentally were in cities near Alps ski resorts, etc. So while he made only 30K, his out of pocket expenses were about $600 a month because the company paid for everything else.
I'm not saying the tax shift would be a bad idea, I'm just saying once it happens I would expect to see a lot of what I described above start happening.
First of, Kudos to parent post for making a well thought out argument for policy that doesn't involve mindlessly demonizing the left or right in some simplistic idiotic fashion.
Your proposal seems very sound, encourage business and lower the barrier to create and compete. Tax the people who profit, not the company. However, I see two problems with your argument.
1) Corporations don't really pass on taxes to the consumers. Most taxes are on profits, not units sold, so unless you are thinking that sales tax is lion's share of tax that is paid out (it isn't), this isn't really an accurate view. A better way to describe taxes for corporations is being paid out of profits that could be returned to investors as profit or used for recapitalization. This would probably just result in the really wealth owners of corporations becoming even more wealth unless you also really cranked up the personal income tax for the wealthy and removed tax dodges. Businesses get to write off business expenses and deduct them from profits already, so removing taxes on profits isn't going to suddenly cause companies to radically change their expenditure on labor or infrastructure.
2) Corporations are used as personal piggy-banks by the very wealthy. By removing any taxes on corporate profits, you allow me as a majority interest holder in a large or wealthy corporation to keep my profits in the corp and then use the profits to acquire more companies and aggregate holdings completely tax free. And only divesting as I needed cash. It would be like being able to put your entire income into a tax free ROTH account, and only deducting money (and therefor paying taxes) when you bought groceries, but accruing wealth and interest in the interim.
If you want to do something like this, you would need to put some rules in place to keep corporations either reinvesting or divesting profits to shareholders and employees.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!