reducing China risk is wise
Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
61–70 of 598 posts
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#62I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.
2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources, etc
And good luck with that with China holding so much of our debt. Military leaders in the US for decades has been warning politicians that our debt is one of our biggest threats.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. 1B of people in China was lifted from poverty because of it. And once it's done with one poor country, it starts taking care of the others :)
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It's hard for me to understand how someone can hold this view, and it's hard to know where to start, but no. As capitalism has expanded it has dramatically reduced absolute poverty. It's not even close, and the change only got more dramatic when communism collapsed as an alternative.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Sin...
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#64Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#65Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#66How is no one mentioning that China is threatening Taiwan. If the US ends up in a war with China, suddenly most Apple products would have serious operations problems if not being shut off completely. Cheap labor isn't a bad reason, but this is also a hedge against the heating politics between the West and both Russia and China.
And how does that help when raw materials still need to come from China and many of the components?
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a political move. Vietnamese manufacturing is cheaper than Chinese. Chinese labour has gotten expensive over time. EDIT: politics are definitely a welcome side effect, but not the main reason
Why would Apple decide to build in Vietnam after secretly committing $275B to advance Chinese manufacturing? Western political heat seems most logical.
How does Apple “secretly” commit to spending $275B? It couldn’t be too much of a secret if random HN posters know about it.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#68I wonder how long it will be until Apple is running their own fabs, or at least diversifies away from heavily relying on TSMC. Has anyone seen news to this effect?
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#69I suppose this means Wisconsin is SOL. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/foxconn_wisconsin_fac...
Most likely Foxconn/WI just crony capitalism and political circus. Numerous articles over the past years about complete lack of delivery by Foxconn and lack of political followthrough from WI state government.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#70A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…
Capitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. 1B of people in China was lifted from poverty because of it. And once it's done with one poor country, it starts taking care of the others :)
Is it ironic that the capitalistic poverty lift solidified the CCP?