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> but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer HUGE "citation needed" here. Apple did a study years ago (when Obama was President) and the cost to manufacture iPhones in the US was well under 10% of the total cost, by their own calculations. The cost of labor in China has only gotten worse since then (hence the move to Vietnam in the OP).
> years ago No longer the case obviously but more importantly, Apple studied themselves and found they were only saving 10% in costs? This makes no sense lol
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…
The interesting thing about the geopolitical context is that Vietnam is also single party Communist country now practicing state capitalism and also has all the trappings of communism such as internment of dissidents, same as China does But our willingness to never think about it comes from Vietnam’s irrelevance, not the system they practice
I suppose this means Wisconsin is SOL. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/foxconn_wisconsin_fac...
And yet the kids can’t find work…
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I don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point. My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.
That's the same thing. It's just an arbitrary line in the sand you have drawn where you say if care about these issues but not these you must be dishonest.
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In July, the highest ranking EU offical visited Taiwan, and China didn't even batter an eyelid. But when the US visits, China threw its toys out of the cot and threatened the US and Taiwan. China is the one provoking people here.
I 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?
I think it is more likely that TSMC is diversifying away from building only in Taiwan. They have the expertise. Apple's expertise is engineering, design, and marketing. They don't own their own factories because that is not their expertise, and they probably don't want to bring that in house.
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It's exactly the opposite. People who can afford a good education are harder to control.
No it isn't. People with nothing to lose and living in poverty while seeing their democratic neighbors prospering are harder to control. People with education, jobs, and families - something to lose - are easier to control. How many Tienanmen Squares has China had since Asian and Western democracies opened their markets and enriched China.
They definitely had much more to lose than Marx's lumpen proletariat.
Of course, now people in China, especially in the rich coastal cities, have dramatically more to lose. They've been shown though that they would be allowed to prosper, as long as they do not try to disobey or even express doubt about CCP's rule. So it's pretty easy for them to convince themselves that CCP's policy is fine enough and not worth protesting against.
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China was literally able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty with all the manufacturing that was moved there. I think most people don't understand anything about economics. Vietnam absolutely wants and will benefit from an increasingly industrialized economy. edit: I'm seeing a number of comments pointing out how these are companies owned by Koreans. Which maybe isn't optimal, but the potential for…
How long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook where they start to manufacture things based on the plans foreign companies brought them and sell the product under Vietnamese company brands?
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…
International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents to war and often helps countries become allies.