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Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#111

Post by alephnerd »

pishpash wrote: post #41
eej71 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.

If they are poorer than people in Vietnam they can just go to Vietnam to work. That's not that much different than going to southern China to work. It is almost a common market.

A number of rural migrant workers in China DO go to Vietnam to work[0], though this has been increasingly cracked down on by the Vietnamese government[1]. On a similar note, the Belt and Roads Initiative itself essentially acted as a jobs placement program to alleviate labor issues after the 2015-16 Stock Market crash in China [TODO: Find page numbers from notes]

[0] - https://data.vietnam.opendevelopmentmekong.net/dataset/fefed...

[1] - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/workers-1029202011165...

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#112

Post by yrgulation »

booleandilemma wrote: post #93
yrgulation wrote: post #49

At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments. If a real war starts we can use the services industry, unless we outsource that too. We’ll send the lawyers and software engineers in, and power our cardboard tanks with wood and steam. I was hoping the pandemic and the war in europe would teach us that electronics, particularly high end, should be relocated to allied countries at the very lea…

Would it be so bad to outsource the US government to say, Sweden, or one of those other Nordic countries? I feel like they know what they're doing. Could we at least outsource the NYC MTA to them?

Note the term “allied” in my comment. Cooperation, sharing of intel and workload among allies is not an issue in my view. I am not a looney nationalist or protectionist, nor do i have an issue with china or russia or their people, i simply want the free world to end its reliance on countries that will not hesitate to use it against us. Also it would help our economies and overall progress.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#113

Post by thankful69 »

gleenn wrote: post #27

How 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.

Vietnam is also a communist (which we invaded and got badly defeated btw), dictatorship loving (Cuba, Venezuela, ....) country, whatever you see in China, you also see in Vietnam, media isn't just as vicious with Vietnam. In the other hand, Vietnam have a bright future, they have developed significantly in the last decade, I wish them well.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#114

Post by Zigurd »

koheripbal wrote: post #38
mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A 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…

There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese workers w…

Assembly plants are just one kind of manufacturing, albeit a very visible part. Petroleum refining and other chemicals are manufacturing. The US does a lot of that.

Manufacturing has been a growing share of GDP for the past few years, interrupted surprisingly briefly by COVID. Just that most of it isn't assembly lines.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#115

Post by wbsss4412 »

alphabetting wrote: post #97
wbsss4412 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a communist country when they want to discuss their faults.

A ton of the achievement has to do with Western investments. For example, Apple spent $275 billion in the late 2010s to build up Chinese tech manufacturing capabilities. That's one company doing a 5X larger investment than the "historic" CHIPs bill signed by Biden this year.

Western FDI has definitely played a major role in China’s growth, yes.

Note that my comment doesn’t call that into question though, only that the conversation around chinas success is almost always grossly oversimplified to suit ideological agendas.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#116

Post by alephnerd »

eej71 wrote: post #32
mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A 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…

If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.

+1 on Invisible China. Scott Rozelle's group at the FSI has been doing some good work on trying to alleviate the opportunity gap that exists in several prefectures in the PRC.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#117

Post by vletal »

ninth_ant wrote: post #98
rdbell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents to war and often helps countries become allies.

Ukraine’s #1 trading partner was Russia, and Russia’s #3 trading partner was Ukraine. I remember reading the same argument in the 90s, and it seemed to have a lot of merit. But, experience shows us that it’s not correct.

Exactly. Russia's #1 gas importer is EU.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#118

Post by president »

AYBABTME wrote: post #26

I 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.

Nobody does until it affects them personally or unless they have some compassion for others in their country who don't have the same opportunities and skillset as you. Many of the drugged out people on the street without homes or a future could have been hard working factory workers but wealthy people thought it would be better to save a few bucks and boost their own paychecks by offshoring.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#119

Post by kube-system »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #110
kube-system wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, they are both; China has a mixed economy.

They are indeed. It is quite clear, however, that most analyses of their economic successes don’t add that nuance and come to the predetermined conclusion that I outlined above: the success is due completely to adopting western capitalism, and the negatives are due to the elements that don’t fit that mold.

It's fairly clear which policies have contributed to their economic rise.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#120

Post by mr_toad »

alphabetting wrote: post #74
scarface74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Apple “secretly” commit to spending $275B? It couldn’t be too much of a secret if random HN posters know about it.

it was secret for years until The Information reported it. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/report-apple-ceo-tim...

Most businesses deals are secret by default. All my contracts have confidentiality clauses. The only reason to make a deal non-secret is PR.
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