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Trump Tells Apple To Make Products In the US To Avoid China Tariffs (thehill.com)
hackingbear writes: President Trump acknowledged in a tweet that "Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China," but suggested the issue was not with the tariffs themselves. "There is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now," Trump wrote. The U.S. is threatening to impose 25% tariffs on all $500 billion worth of Chinese imports over issues such as intellectual property theft.
While Apple et al are still making their products in China, Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products, given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%. Manufacturers also need to compete in the labor market with garbage companies who need to find American laborers willing to recycle their own trash -- a job once imposed upon China as a condition to enter the World Trade Organization and enjoy advantageous tariff rates. China is gracefully giving back those jobs as the U.S. is complaining of unfair trades.
While Apple et al are still making their products in China, Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products, given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%. Manufacturers also need to compete in the labor market with garbage companies who need to find American laborers willing to recycle their own trash -- a job once imposed upon China as a condition to enter the World Trade Organization and enjoy advantageous tariff rates. China is gracefully giving back those jobs as the U.S. is complaining of unfair trades.
On paper we're at full unemployment. But funny enough there's a ton of resentment around not having jobs in America. Of course, everyone knows the unemployment stats are nonsense. But we act like they're not.
This leads to some crazy political theater. For one thing we've got economists trying to come up with excuses about why wages aren't climbing despite "full" employment. And now we've got Trump needing to explain to businesses where they'll get workers needed to run factories when on paper those workers already have jobs. I mean, I suppose Trump could argue that he'll do mass immigration. I'm sure that'll go over swell at his monthly rallies.
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Why United States?
Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China - but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now. Exciting! #MAGA
Good lordy Trump is such a moron.
Does he truly not realize that consumer prices will rise with either model?
1) Build in China with tariffs: Consumer prices increase.
2) Build in the USA with American wages. Consumer prices increase.
Heaven forbid you have to pay for American workers and their disgusting demands of a living wage, safety regulations, and health care.
I'd happily save a few bucks if it only means a few dirty chink children die.
Amazing how Trump has transformed the Republican party into being everything they used to be against.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I doubt that they need that many. In the U.S., a million Chinese laborers become 999,000 robots and 1,000 robot technicians.
The 3.9% reported are just those unemployed and on benefits, who are not enrolled in any market programs.
Also, Apple will never under any circumstances accept making loads of money instead of the shitloads of money they make now, by absorbing some of the costs for manufacturing in the U.S.
Also, there would be a huge issue of build quality. China are the definite masters of manufacturing, and with the size of their manufacturing plants and decades of experience, it would cost tens of billions and perhaps a whole decade of work to achieve the same in the U.S., that's how far ahead China is when it comes to manufacturing.
every 2 years or so does not count. Since it mostly goes to increase their crazy high profit margin. Don't get me wrong I am all for profit margins. But to point at the tariffs and say that is the problem that will cause higher prices is a bit bold. The prices will go up no matter what. TBH I don't think it will affect Apple much their market will sacrifice most anything to have the latest greatest Apple device/gadget and I say good for Apple.
;)
As I sit here with my old mobile phone that does everything I want. It is all about choice and needs.
Just my 2 cents
You have a point, but we could partly solve this by dropping the patent system (the average smartphone has over 250,000 patents covering it), then instead of obscene profits all going to a tiny handful of mega-wealthy shareholders, we could have products made in America that are also still affordable, as getting rid of the patents would cause a huge drop in the price of the products, which would (A) offset the increase that goes to paying a living wage to American workers and (B) help keep the products comparably affordable to said middle-class workers.
More anti-Trump propaganda by the Arab-owned machine, Slashdot.
Unemployment isn't at 3.9% and never has been. It may still be 10% or 20% depending on the rampant redefinitions that have neen going on since the Obama era. Oh, if you haven't been able to find a job after a few months, obviously you have given up, so we aren't going to count you. It's just like faking the CPI to get the inflation rate number to be what they want it to be: it's a big con game.
And while we're on the topic of con games, Apple needs "laborers" as the "editor" puts it. The Slashdot editor's implication is that Chinese de facto slave labor shouldn't be replaced by American labor. Where will it come from? The free market, you insolent fool. If someone is working three part-time jobs and averages $9/hr in Tennessee between Amazon and working as a waiter at two restaurants or has the option to do something more productive like assembling iPhones for $13/hr, full-time with overtime, where do you think those jobs will come from?
Apple just got a ton of money from that giant tax cut. We're going to be paying for Apple's tax cut for decades, they can afford to lose out a little on their already very comfortable profit margins.
I'd really stick it to the US. Just shut down all exports to the US, pending trade talks. We would really feel that.
Trump is playing a very dangerous game with the dragon.
One relevant criticism of the tariffs is the actual cost of work done of assembling the Apple product is a tiny faction of it's value. For a $2000 computer it might be less than $100.So taxing the full value can be considered unfair, as the conservatives always like to say.
What I find interesting is that lots of industries do not face such complications. For instance apparel can be sourced more easily that cars or electronics, and assembled in the USA. However, as simple as it is to make clothes in the USA, Trump and his family still chooses to make the clothes in Mexico and China.
So, as Trump chooses not manufacture in the US, and in fact regularly imports workers from other countries instead of hiring local workers, we can only assume that he knows, as president, something we do not. Like maybe US workers are inferior.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Wow, could you have packed more trolling in a single post?
The best line was logistics. So we can manage to import phones and bring them to the heartland, where most of our food comes from, btw, but we are incapable of shipping phones out of those same places. But we can ship a gazillion tons of food out. Lololololol
Try again, son. A good effort, though.
Unfortunately, yes, because those long term unemployed adults are called retirees, who dropped out of the workforce, either voluntarily or forcibly during the recession. They do depend on Social Security and Medicare, mainly the latter, because many do have either pensions, or good retirement funds, but drug costs and medical costs will obliterate anyone's retirement fund in a heartbeat. And yes, they are cheering him on to destroy those 2 programs. Hence the unironic quote "Keep the government out of my Medicare". And yes many many boomers who are retired are hard core Trump supporters.
There's another problem with moving manufacturing to the US.
There's also the reality that other countries impose their own excessive, punitive tariffs on manufactured goods from the US.
Tariffs aren't uniquely American.
Ken
Now the actual chip & electronics manufacturing capabilities of China, combined with reasonable quality affordable staff, that's a lot harder to replace.
Any manufacturing capability China has can be easily replicated in America, esp. by a company like Apple with their seemingly infinite financial resources, what can't be replicated here are low wages, lax environmental and worker protections.
Ken
I'm skeptical that there is a labor shortage. Simple supply and demand rules of economics tells us that if there is a labor shortage, then the price of labor should increase. Small increases are normal due to inflation, and I'm glad if there are a few companies forced to shell out a few more bucks to its workers, but so far I haven't seen any huge amounts that would indicate a "labor shortage".
We don't know how you ended up with Bozo the Clown for your president...
The media went all in to elect Hillary. They promoted Trump and changed the subject to Trump every time anyone talked about anything else during the campaign. They did this to ensure Hillary's opponent would be Trump, because they were sure Hillary could beat Trump. But they didn't understand that Hillary is terrible — really, really terrible in many different ways. Americans are also tired of being lectured to by people who hold them in contempt. Long story short, Trump won, Hillary lost. Hope that helps.
...but he is an embarrassment to your country in pretty much the entire rest of the world.
Cosmopolitan vanity has negative practical value. There's zero reason to believe that foreigners' opinion of the US matters at all, and Americans who court foreign favor are the ones would should really be embarrassed.
"Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products"
What Apple really means is they can't find enough laborers willing to work for slave labor rates in the US. And why would Trump be responsible for finding laborers for Apple? Isn't that Apple's responsibility? If Apple is upset over the tariffs eating into their profit margins they should come up with a better reason than not being able to find enough workers. The truth is Apple could absorb the tariffs and still make tons of money. The manufacturing and shipping costs for a $900 iPhone is less than $20 dollars per unit. And since Apple has just been updating the iPhone and not producing anything new they have not had to re-tool their manufacturing assembly lines or re-train the existing laborers. That is a hefty profit margin. That's how you become one of the richest corporations on the planet.
And this isn't the first time Apple has stuck their proverbial foot in their mouth. They made a big production over refusing to obey a Federal Court warrant requiring them to assist in gaining access to a dead terrorist iPhone. A phone the dead terrorist didn't even own. His employer owned the phone and gave the government permission to access the phone by any means necessary. Apple said obeying the court order would require too many resources and the cost would be prohibitive. Then they pushed the idea that accessing the phone might not even be possible because of Apple's top notch security. This was Apple's attempt at creating a marketing campaign touting their security and protecting the user's privacy. So after all this BS a 3rd party accessed the phone without help from Apple in less than 3 days. So much for touting their top shelf security measures.
Agree that Hillary was a pretty awful candidate. Electing Trump instead was not a "look how smart we are" moment though.
Vanity again. The other girls in my middle school class can't even!
Meanwhile, economy is going great, Americans have jobs and a reason to feel good about their economic prospects for the first time in 10 years.
As for foreigners, America used to have lots of friends in the world. Now you have people who tolerate you out of necessity.
I'm sure that will recover in time once you have a normal person in charge again though.
Yeah. I don't care. No one else in the US should care either. Foreign countries claim friendship or don't, and they pursue their own agendas. They'll never choose what's good for the US over what's good for their own people — and they shouldn't.
Are diplomatic smiles genuine or forced? What difference does it make? None.
I used to do Perl programming, I had to move from Pittsburgh to Tucson, AZ because there were no Perl positions in Pittsburgh and had to move half-way across the country because they could find no one locally for the position. If you are Shenzhen, there are thousand chip programmers because there are literally a thousand companies with those sorts of jobs, of course there is no problem with finding someone there!
I can imagine most people would not know what a "pick and place machine" is. Why would people apply for a job just because a company is offering a salary? Most companies don't respond to most job applications and why waste time for applying for positions they barely know anything about? Where is the responsibility of the company to train and educate people they wish to employ?
It would cost Apple more to make the iPhone in the US.
Probably twice as much, if not more.
Now, most of the iPhone cost is nothing but profit, so they could in theory absorb it but... why would they? If they could absorb it, they'd own the entire phone market by now by just cutting their ridiculous phone prices.
They'd also have a couple of years of utter mayhem as they built factories, hired workers, moved stock and parts, etc etc.
Much as I hate Apple, it's a stupid idea. The reason that companies *don't* already do everything themselves in the US (or most of the first-world nations) is because it's just too expensive for them to do so. And people likely wouldn't pay the prices they'd have to charge, or their shareholders would revolt at suddenly cutting their (stupendous, sickening) profit in half overnight.
Trump doesn't get economics at all. And he certainly doesn't get trade.
Sure, Apple moving back gives you taxes and jobs. And then China will have no money from you, less incentive to be favourable in their trades, more expensive for everything you DO need them for (which is an awful lot, not least landfilling those phones once they're dead).
And if they were to, say, have a huge electronics manufacturing industry, they could make your life hell overnight, not least by making you source and produce every chip from somewhere else, but also having to compete against their phones that do more for less money. With almost no effort at all.
Meanwhile, economy is going great, Americans have jobs and a reason to feel good about their economic prospects for the first time in 10 years.
That is true in most places. The long recovery from 2008 is not a Trump exclusive
They'll never choose what's good for the US over what's good for their own people
Those are not necessarily mutually exclusive things. Or didn't use to be anyway.
Unfortunately, yes, because those long term unemployed adults are called retirees
Hold on a minute. So Trump is lying about unemployment because he quoted a rate that doesn't include RETIREES?
Your comments about drug and medical costs are irrelevant. I'd love to see major changes in the US Healthcare system, but anyone who calls a number "unemployment" when it includes retirees is full of shit. If somebody retired and then ran out of money and started looking for work then they're unemployed, but you can't just say that everyone who is not working is unemployed. At least not if you want to keep the word "unemployed" as a bad thing.
Unemployment means #1 you want to work and #2 you're able to work. If you don't meet both those criteria then you're not unemployed regardless of whether you don't have a job.
And if the only "work" you're willing to do is work that no one is willing to pay you for then you don't qualify as wanting to work. I do things that require skill and effort but that no one would be willing to pay me to do but I also do things a company IS willing to pay me for. If I CHOOSE to only do the former and not the later then I should NOT BE counted as unemployed.
So it is OK for the Chinese to strip mine for rare earth metals, and then build the Iphones with slave labor and then ship those Iphones overseas on Nigerian flagged vessels staffed with cheap labor from the Philippines to be consumed by snooty white liberals who hate racism, but If Americans mine for rare earth metals on American soil, and then build those Iphones in America using American labor, and then ship those phones on trucks driven by Americans to be sold to Americans who can afford to buy them because they make stuff, then that is racist and damaging the environment.
Got it.
They would be drastically better if we hadn't also imported millions of cheap workers from 3rd world countries to replace American workers who demand fair wages.