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.

Comments

Imagine if Trump announced that

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 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.

Re:Imagine if Trump announced that

[bluefoxlucid]

Trade is beneficial. Trade lowers prices and increases wealth. Moving the manufacture of goods which have been offshored back to America would mean that those very factory workers would work longer hours to buy the same goods they're making. Above a certain factory worker wage, there would be fewer factory workers than lost American jobs; below a certain factory worker wage, we'd come up short, and so create American jobs to fill.

So, we're talking about destroying American jobs and making all Americans poorer, or about creating a few American jobs and also making all Americans poorer.

...yeah, we should continue to strategically offshore work that's cheaper to offshore, slowly, at a rate that doesn't shock our economy with sudden spikes in unemployment. Obviously our economy tanks if we go 30% unemployed overnight; whereas if we lose 0.1% per month to trade, we end up rich enough to offset it, creating more American jobs by the time the next year's layoffs come, thus ending up with lower unemployment and a wealthier middle- and lower-class.

Re:Imagine if Trump announced that

[ErichTheRed]

The only thing that matters to the macro-economy as a whole is employment. Unless you plan on replacing the entire "money as a store of value" system, you need a supply of all kinds of jobs across the employment spectrum to ensure money can flow. Otherwise, we see what's happening now -- the rich just hoard all the money and pull up the ladder behind them. The only measures of economic health that matter are employment and velocity of money. Trade is only beneficial when both countries are on the same economic footing.

India's regulations may seem harsh, but they do ensure that manufacturing remains a viable career path. The fantasy of turning everyone in the US into intellectuals and forcing everyone to go to college has to stop at some point. You need a 2-track system -- one way to a comfortable living is education and professional work, and the other is high-paying factory and trade work with a similar career path guaranteed by unions or similar devices.

Re:Imagine if Trump announced that

[Jason1729]

This is why the system is so screwed up. Even if prices shot up 50%, every cent would go to boost the American economy, and everyone would win over the medium and long term. And so replace your iPhone every 3 years instead of every 2. Same money spent, plus 1 million Chinese jobs can move back to America. Using your phone a bit longer is a small price to pay.

And how much of this dirt cheap Chinese manufacturing ends up costing so much more (sulphur drywall in florida homes, formaldehyde in wood flooring, poison pet food and baby formula, etc, etc, etc). And how much of it ends up in American landfills before the box it was shipped in does? Just buy less garbage, and manufacturer more expensive tech that you'll keep longer. Better for America, better for the average person even paying the higher price, and better for the planet.

The problem is all the idiot voters who can't see past their next pay check until that pay check never comes again.

Re:Imagine if Trump announced that

[Anonymous Coward]

The American people should support it l up until the check out line when the price of their goods shot up 50% to cover the inflated costs of manufacturing in the USA.

Not even Trump can afford to make clothes in the USA the cost is too high. In the end these costs will be meaningless as robotic factories will be designed to build package and ship what you want when you neeed it. As that happens manufacturing will go where the buyers are to lower transportation costs

You don't seem to understand economics. Or maybe you do but you, like too many, keep talking about the cost too high in the USA.

Tell me this: how in blazes did people in the USA afford clothing before all this globalization? Were they mostly naked, or wore animal skins? Or maybe rags?

The problem with global trade is that it is not a fair or level playing field. It is manipulated by very wealthy people who "invest" in money markets and other buying and selling of foreign currencies, all of which affect the prices of imports and exports. And of course you have people who work 100 hour weeks for pennies and live in squalor to make those cheap clothes, but of course it's not your fault for buying the stuff and creating a market for it. But any talk of some kind of uniform, controlled system (called government) that tries to apply import quotas and tariffs and people start whining about the cost of "goods".

Meanwhile more and more people are being laid off of their reasonable pay jobs, only to work part-time in Amazon warehouses, and now they can't afford better-quality American-made goods, so to ChinaMart (Walmart, Target, etc.) we go. Do you see the vicious cycle?

Meanwhile I'm getting more and more discouraged (and angry) at the horrifically poor quality of pretty much everything these days, and pretty much all of it comes from China or Mexico. I really want to see those giant shipping containers filled up with the crap that breaks far too soon, and the containers come back filled up with the dollars those things cost, plus replacement / repair costs.

The whole economic system is hugely complex and dynamic, and too many people think they have the answer by looking at a narrow-minded snapshot of economics, society, etc. The 1 percenters are doing a great job of keeping the rest of us fighting, scrapping, theorizing, protesting, and chasing that shrinking carrot we see hanging out there somewhere.

They don't want to lose a potential market

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Huge [Citation Needed] for that

[sethstorm]

price of their goods shot up 50%

Non-hyperbolic [citation needed] for that.

...and destroys faster than it replaces.

[sethstorm]

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.

Re:Oh, snap!

[HornWumpus]

If you keep this up, you assuring a Trump second term. Did you learn anything?

Am not phibian about this

[fyngyrz]

Even if prices shot up 50%, every cent would go to boost the American economy

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.

And so replace your iPhone every 3 years instead of every 2. Same money spent,

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.