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.

Comments

This is kind of hilarious

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:This is kind of hilarious

[alvinrod]

Unemployment numbers are meaningless if they fail to consider the labor participation rate (which itself isn't the full picture). There are still a lot of people without jobs that have essentially given up on finding one. What we should be looking at is the number of hours of labor that are being worked. It doesn't matter if you've got two jobs on paper if they're both being filled by the same person because they can't get a 40 hour position any longer.

Tariffs are beyond idiotic as a solution to our economic issues and even if Trump does somehow manage to enact them, they're not going to survive beyond his presidency. We should be going in the opposite direction and removing all tariffs. If China or some other government wants to subsidize a local industry, let's import the hell out of those products. I'd be over the moon to get some other country's tax payers to foot the bill for the goods I purchase.

Find millions of laborers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that they need that many. In the U.S., a million Chinese laborers become 999,000 robots and 1,000 robot technicians.

Re:Rock and hard place

[fermion]

With consumer electronics, and increasing cars, there is no made in one country. Parts are sourced from all over the world. Tariffs are going to add to costs no matter where it is made because a lot of stuff is going to have to be imported no matter what.

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.

Re:Prices increase either way.

[Zero__Kelvin]

I always love these "Most people don't understand that Trump just sounds like a moron who went bankrupt several times and couldn't even make money with a casino, but really he is a negotiation wizard and very stable genius who went bankrupt several times and couldn't even make money with a casino" comments. Pure gold.