Slashdot Mirror
Apple In Talks With India To Manufacture Locally (reuters.com)
Apple is in talks with India's government to explore making products locally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, as the U.S. firm aims to make deeper inroads in the world's second-largest mobile phone market by users. From a report: India Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to boost technology manufacturing in the country through his 'Make in India' initiative. His government in June exempted foreign retailers for three years from a requirement to locally source 30 percent of goods sold in their stores. The Journal said Apple, in a letter to the federal government in November, outlined manufacturing plans and asked for financial incentives.
>> His government in June exempted foreign retailers for three years from a requirement to locally source 30 percent of goods sold in their stores
Imagine if Trump announced a requirement that foreign retailers locally source 30 percent of their goods. The Republicans would fight it because "free trade" and the Democrats would fight it because "Trump == Hilter". But the bulk of Americans would probably support it...and that's why our political parties have lost their moorings.
A lot of people might not know that India has a very protectionist policy regarding manufactured goods. It's very difficult to get items into the country from outside if there's any chance they will be used to conduct business. The company I work for is currently engaged in a love affair with India and Brazil for offshore development. Some of the stuff they're writing requires local access to hardware they can't just buy off the shelf from a distributor...there are only a few manufacturers out there and they're not making it in India. Getting anything into both of these countries that wasn't made there doesn't just involve paying a duty -- there's a byzantine maze of regulations, forms, local officials to pay, special assessments, personal visits to Government Agency X for stamps and signatures, etc. Last time this happened it took 4 months to ship the offshore company hardware -- and that's with our company having connections in the form of logistics specialists who know what actually needs to happen.
Apple just doesn't want to lose a potential market of over a billion people. They'd rather take the short term "loss" manufacturing at slightly above slave labor rates to ensure their products can be sold domestically. This is also happening to a lesser extent in Brazil, for the same reasons.
It's very ironic that a country whose major export seems to be IT "services" to the US and Europe has such a protectionist policy regarding manufacturing. Maybe they see what's happening in their customers' countries and don't want to have a rebellion on their hands when wages start going up inside their country. Personally, I'm for protectionism. It's a balance against the power of companies. Growing up in the Rust Belt and watching whole cities get hollowed out as companies chased cheap Southern, then foreign labor, was not fun. I seriously doubt Trump is going to follow through on his tariffs and protectionist platform...his buddies are going to demand that he put a stop to it, and they have more power than the working class types who helped vote him in.
I'll ask just one more time, this is local?
[Apple] outlined manufacturing plans and asked for financial incentives.
Apple: We'd like to make more money selling iCrap to India.
...
India: That sounds great!
Apple: Give us money first.
... 3 years later
India: It appears you owe 3% taxes on the locally sourced 30% hardware. If you would kindly remit payment...
Apple: According to our Irish subsidiary, we don't have any sales in India.
Tell us more about this "Open Source" "US-made" hardware you own.
Perhaps Apple might want to consider doing that for the US and turning on Jobs' word.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
price of their goods shot up 50%
Non-hyperbolic [citation needed] for that.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Trade is beneficial.
Trade lowers prices and increases wealth.
Only when it's not destroying entire regions.
It's easy to write off entire regions and wait for the displaced to die, which is your solution.
It's harder, but more proper and prosperous to continuously re-integrate the displaced, even if it means forsaking certain trade policies.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So long as you keep your drones, missiles, warships, military back within your own boarders.
Stop interfering with the politics of other nations, US interest stop at the US boarder.
You give up your "veto" rights in the UN (along with the other countries that have veto rights).
No, they don't understand that.
America was NEVER great.
Its was lucky, thats all.
Find me another highly populated, industrialised country with good natural resources and infrastructure that was not bombed to hell in WWII. So while the US made money selling weapons during WWII, the made even more money selling stuff to rebuild infrastructure to Europe and Asia, etc. This bought significant wealth to the US, allowed US firms to pick up technologies developed during the war and make consumer items from the technologies rather than spend time rebuilding schools, hospitals, roads, power, water, houses, rail, etc etc etc etc etc. This meant they were able to ride the crest of the consumerism that happened in the 50s through to the late 70's. This is where US wages peaked, and has in real terms been shrinking since. The world no longer NEEDs the US, they have rebuilt, they are developing new technologies, their economies have caught up. Anything they dont have they can buy from other countries, not just the US. China will soon be the biggest economy if it isn't already. If Brexit had not happened the EU would have been second with the US 3rd and falling. Times have changed, the US needs the world for its resources, its people, its ideas. It needs to trade, without that trade the US economy collapses. Trump is NOT going to negotiate "better deals", most are already skewed in favour of the US anyway. There is growing resistance to the US around the world and it policies . What if the world reduced patent and copyright ? What would happen if the world no longer cared about US regulatory bodies, CAA, FDA, etc etc and set international standards instead ? What would happen if trade was done in Euros ? What would happen if a "new" UN was set up and no one had "veto" powers ? What is the US were excluded from most of the worlds free trade trade agreements ? The US has much more to loose than gain these days, and it was NEVER great.
Not necessarily. Some value "stuff" more than employment. It depends on the person. Being unemployed carries a nasty stigma, especially for males. But some may be okay with robots and commie slaves doing all the work as long as they still get stuff.
Another approach for our economy is to have fewer jobs-protection measures to unleash the economy to produce more goods and services, but tax the well-to-do more and distribute the money to those who would otherwise be blue-collar workers. It's essentially semi-socialism where those in valued careers subsidize those in obsolete careers.
Thus, fewer labor regulations may boost our total GDP compared to high-labor-regulation countries, but we'd have to redistribute a good portion of that extra wealth to the obsolete workers.
Which is "better" is a subjective political decision. It's a tricky trade-off.
Also, "intellectual" work is potentially at risk of being made obsolete as remoting and language translation technologies improve. There are smart people in low-wage countries that could more easily do brainy work for US companies as remoting technology improves. There are a lot of smart untapped people around the world. After all, look at all the hacking done by those who get small rewards for doing it in terms of US cost of living. US hackers are too expensive to rent. Could be the same for any technical endeavor, not just hacking.
Thus, us techies are not immune to obsolescence. We may be in the same boat as blue-collar workers soon. It's yet another reason not to throw the blue-collared under the bus; change will add more space under that bus.
Table-ized A.I.
Making paragraphs great again
By doing what they do now - manufacturing in China and then shipping to India
But the US is not there in this equation, aside from Apple being an US company. It's the question of shipping phones made in China to India. With this proposal, Apple would have to make it in India, and sell it there. The incentives offered here are investments in Apple if Apple agrees to do that.
How?
Actually, the US should quit the UN and NATO too. Issue an advisory to Americans not to travel to Europe or the Middle East (aside from Israel), and then everything will be fine
How?
According to various Trump supporters on Slashdot, the election of Trump has caused the stock market to boom, turned back job-killing regulations and jobs are flooding back into the country. If Apple goes to India for manufacturing, Trump had obviously failed to keep his campaign promise. Never mind that Trump haven't been sworn into office and many of his policies won't go into effect until the 2018 fiscal year.
The UN without the security council is the general assembly. The UN general assembly is a useless money pit full of terrible ideas from failed states.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But this is a separate deal that Apple signed w/ India regarding phones that get sold in India. In short, instead of shipping phones from Chinese warehouses to Apple stores in India, they will manufacture them in India and sell them there. That doesn't affect anything in the US: if Apple does decide to make phones in the US, it'll still happen, and if they don't, then they'll continue to ship Chinese made phones to the US. Unless Trump totally blows up all trade links w/ China, forcing Apple to move their manufacturing elsewhere
Where as the security council is equally useless because the veto power get exercised by the big 3 to allow other countries to commit crimes against humanity because they are their "friend". The right to veto is the right to deny democracy.
Further translation: "We need a place where we can bugger all in tax and wages, while we build the robots so we can fire our entire workforce."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Apple asks Indian government if they can set up a sweat-shop where they pay small change to Indian workers, while paying jack shit in taxes for the crazy revenue they will be making. What a fucking shit company.
But this is a separate deal that Apple signed w/ India regarding phones that get sold in India.
No, no, no. All manufacturing must be done in the U.S. to bring jobs back and make America great again. If Apple isn't doing that, it will get penalized or put out of business. Trump! Trump! Trump!
So, we need another war?
OK, looks like we're gonna try that approach, doesn't it?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Thank dog we don't have world democracy. Especially a democracy made up of corrupt leadership appointed bullshitters from failed tiny states.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Further translation: "Would you people like a computer using years-old tech that looks like a garbage can and is almost guaranteed to litter your workspace with wall warts and desk cancers? Because we can totally do that for you. Because we have courage."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you keep this up, you assuring a Trump second term. Did you learn anything?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Looking at who the US has elected, its not just tiny states.
Purchases would decline sharply in many market segments, because the perception of value (such as it is) would evaporate in very short order.
Which would not boost the American economy.
How about the attitudes that change to "I don't think I need another iPhone"? Do you think that's a factor that should be ignored?
You want to boil the froggies, you better turn the heat up very slowly. Or those uncooperative little #00FF00 bastards will hop right the hell away.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Did you learn anything?
Of course, not. I voted for Hillary. ;)
You are an idiot. The US is a nation that was born with the idea that rationality matters and that enlightened self interest matters. The US did sell weapons to our allies during WWII - and GAVE a lot more to them. If the US is so terrible why is American technology running an awful lot of the world? Yes, other nations compete, quite vigorously. But your anti USA bravo sierra is just garbage. Trade deals are NOT skewed in favor of the US, they are skewed in favor of US corporations who, last I noted, employed more people OUTSIDE the US than INSIDE the US.
Big 5. US, UK, Russia, China, Fraance.
Its Russia, USA and UK the use the veto most. Perhaps what is needed is if any country uses a "veto" their security council voting rights are suspended for 3-6 months. It will force them to assess what they are doing.
The problem is the Veto rights are both evil and necessary. Sadly ALL the countries with Veto rights absue them atrociously, but without the veto rights the security council would become just a popularity contest with everyone voting in their blocks and whoever has numbers would simply vote on sanctions etc against those they disagree with and the end result is a pointless mess (kinda like what we have now), can't really think of any system that would be effective though unless somehow a council of truly independent people could be found to have some overriding votes (fat chance of that).
Russia (then, the USSR), the US, and UK were the true victors of WWII, and the architects of the postwar order. So this isn't surprising.
Yes, but the world is different now, those powers of veto are outdated and should be revoked. None of those countries have shown they are responsible with that kind of power, huge wads of humans rights abuse goes unchecked because one of those countries veto any action/sanction against the perpetrators .
Be fair, the USA once had an honest president. At least that's what the grade school history books say.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Who knows? At this point I'd argue the entire UN can go away with no loss.
The government decides education should be free, teachers and principals however want a little higher salary.
Or the government simply doesn't provide a budget for school materials because they know the money will not be used for that and so skip it altogether.
You have no idea what levels of abuse are common practise over there...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.