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Trump Tells Apple To Make Products In the US To Avoid China Tariffs (thehill.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the my-way-or-the-highway dept.

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.

13 of 568 comments (clear)

  1. Or, they could buy them in Canada... by dlingman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't there an 800$ tax/duty etc free limit on importing items from abroad? If they buy their iPhones from Canada, and the cost is under $800 US...

    1. Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Has your country improved measurably since the reduction of union power from the 80s onwards?

    2. Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... by link-error · · Score: 2, Interesting

          You left out the biggest question in my mind...

        "Trump didn't offer Apple a place to find the millions of laborers needed to make their products"

        Millions of laborers? Huh?

      --
      -Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
    3. Re: Or, they could buy them in Canada... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The 2013 MotoX was made in Fort Worth, Texas.

      I own two. Most people own zero.

      That's what "Made in America" is worth to real Americans. The phone was one of the best of the year, and nobody cared about it. They just wanted the latest made in China crap.

  2. History by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This happened before in Europe.

    In the early 80s it was a three way fight for home video recording. You had VHS, Betamax and the Phillips Video 2000 system. The first two were all Japanese machines, the latter were made by Phillips in Europe.

    The Phillips format was technically great. But it came third in that race. Philips got the EEC (precursor to the EU) to put massive tariffs on Japanese machines to make them cost the same as Phipps' ones, but all that did was increase profit margins for Japanese companies and relieve price pressure on their manufacturing.

    In the end Phillips started selling VHS machines, but got screwed by their own tariffs because they had to buy the mechanism in from Matsushita who made it in Japan.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:History by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The main innovation was a crystal discipled tracking system that made the picture more stable, especially when paused or in fast forward.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. not happening by supernova87a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sorry Trump, "Those jobs aren't coming back": https://www.nytimes.com/2012/0...

    Even if the factories could be built here for a reasonable cost, even if the ecosystem of manufacturing suppliers could be recreated here, even if there were enough people looking for work, Americans would not want to take jobs working at such factories even at average factory wages.

    Try to bring those jobs back here and welcome to $2000 iphones.

  4. Re: If I were China by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Someone pointed out that in an import/export imbalance relationship, the country that does the exporting feels the pain more quickly and deeply. Presumably, if China blocked all exports, manufactured goods would become more expensive in the US or hard to find. However, on the flip side many companies in China would have severe cash flow and revenue problems and go bankrupt, leading to massive unemployment, etc. Bad for one side, worse for the other.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. No one is moving jobs to US because of Trump by jader3rd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Pretty much everything that Trump has done, without approval from Congress, is going to get undone once he's out. So every company is just going to keep things in place, because it would be suicidal to invest in a move, only to have the reason for doing so undone before the move is finished.

  6. Re:No, no it isn't 3.9% by kenh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My guess is this 21.2% is in large part the Trump die-hard base members; people who have been unemployed for so long the Feds don't even count them as real people anymore. That's 53M over-18 people.

    You really think the majority of Trump's base are long-term unemployed adults? Let's think about that - you think millions and millions of long-term unemployed adults with no means other than government handouts, are die-hard trump supporters cheering him on to wipe out the very programs they personally rely on to survive? Conventional wisdom is that those without other means of support tend to fall on the democratic end of the political spectrum.

    --
    Ken
  7. Obama already tried by sdinfoserv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Obama sitting next to Steve Jobs at a meeting asked "when are the jobs coming back", referring to the million Foxconn workers. Jobs responded, "never, that ship sailed". China has no labor laws. Just prior to the release of the phone 4, a flaw was found the required every single phone unboxed, fixed and reboxed . To make the marketing date all "employees" (slaves?) were forced to work round the clock to fix every single device so Apple could make the marking date. Also, Foxconn has workers as young as 14 chained to desks, workers live in "barracks", and conditions are so grueling, Foxconn installed nets around it's buildings to catch suicide jumpers. Next time you love your little icrap gadget, think about kids chained to their desks so you can blissfully listing with a your ibuds connected. No way any US based company could get away this.

    1. Re:Obama already tried by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      i used to believe all that until I read "Factory Girls" and a bunch of other material about China by people actually there. i know people who work in factories in the US, and honestly conditions in China are better in some places than they are in alot of the USA. id rather be a FoxConn worker in China than a meat packing worker in Iowa or even a Welder in the midwest. The Foxconners are not slaves either, they come from farming villages with no opportunities and the money they send to their families lets their siblings go to school and it also provides them with opportunities their parents couldnt have dreamed of. the 14 year old thing is possible, but its also been lied about by Mike Daisy. And if you think kids dont work in the US your'e just wrong.

      Let me also point out that in the dormitories at these factories, they dont have to deal with gun violence, which is something I have to deal with in my middle class apartment complex in America. They also dont have to own cars, which sucks down a significant percentage of workers income in the US and results in 30,000 deaths a year.

      By the standards of human rights, we in the US have slavery inside our prisons which are contracted out to private companies.

        etc etc etc

      China has some things that are horrible, like their legal system, lack of free speech, etc, but China is more than the worst cases of human rights abuse - its like pretending that America is an episode of Sopranos or every court case is like the Reality Winner case, and there is nothing else going on in the entire population.

  8. China is not lowest cost anymore by Nocturrne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It wasn't that long ago that Nokia and Motorola had mobile phone factories in the US - I was there in the 90's. Many computers were also made in the US before. The manufacturing of mobile phones is becoming more and more automated. Even in the Foxconn factory (I've been there too), they are using fewer and fewer workers. The main things making the cost of manufacturing in the US higher than China are regulations related to pollution and taxes. The labor cost in China is getting very close to the US - close enough that it is already making no sense to make some things there and then ship them all the way to the other side of the planet.

    China stopped being the lowest labor cost place to manufacture for many industries, years ago. An analysis in 2016 found the cost to assemble iphones in the US would only add roughly 5% to the cost - this was 2 years ago. My only point is entire industries that were in the US and EU 25yrs ago could be moved back home.

    https://www.technologyreview.c...