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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

#391

Post by petesergeant »

ahartmetz wrote: post #387
simondotau wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it depends who you ask. Hypothetically, China could tomorrow claim ownership of Japan, and then the answer to the question of Japanese sovereignty would also "depend on who you ask."

It's really complicated regarding Taiwan, though. There are groups in both countries that say there is only one China and the other one is just occupied by an illegitimate government.

> It's really complicated regarding Taiwan, though

It’s a defacto independent country with 50% wanting to be independent, 25% wanting the status quo, and 10% wanting to be part of China. Not especially complicated.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#393

Post by pm90 »

jakuboboza wrote: post #389

US companies are silently escaping China to limit effects of possible tariffs or even war. Imho this is a strategic move to ensure future.

A convergence of many reasons, including the uncertainty caused by locking down entire cities.

TBH its likely that it was a question of when not if this would happen. Will be interesting to see the geopolitical effects of a diversification of manufacturing capabilities. CCP wouldn’t be able to sustain the current export focused model.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#394

Post by mushbino »

nindalf wrote: post #386
simondotau wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it depends who you ask. Hypothetically, China could tomorrow claim ownership of Japan, and then the answer to the question of Japanese sovereignty would also "depend on who you ask."

This isn’t even that far fetched. The justification for the “nine-dash line” that claims all of the South China Sea in violation of international maritime law is based on some spurious claim like “China controlled this sea at some point in the past”. It’s only a step from there to making Korea and Japan vassal states because they were at some point in the past.

Japan and S Korea are currently vassal states of the US. That's what you meant right?

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#395

Post by pm90 »

Saigonauticon wrote: post #342
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As state before, China is already assembling lots of parts from other Asian countries. Additionally, iPhones are made in special export zones (SEZs), so the parts along with the machinery used to produce an iPhone are all imported without tariff (and even the company doing this is Taiwanese, which embodies a lot of the higher level hardware/production engineering that easily transfers to Vietnam). Consequently, iPhon…

We do. Furniture companies use it a lot already. You can be licensed to import lumber, manufacture using local labor, and export -- without having a license to sell locally. We don't have SEZ, but do have big industrial / IT parks offering support for foreign enterprise. Some are pretty nice. Overall, the permitted activities on your business license matter. Getting licensed is usually easier than people think, excep…

It seems pretty silly to discourage sale of Vietnamese made furniture in Vietnam.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#396

Post by audunw »

mccorrinall wrote: post #317
rednerrus wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China does surprisingly little when it comes to the advanced stuff.

smic (partially state owned) is only two nodes behind tsmc and samsung: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-chipmaker-smics-7nm-...

The result might be close to two nodes behind, but the design and production cost might be higher since they don't have access to EUV machines. I'd say they're further behind than "two nodes". But still, pretty damn advanced.

If their process is essentially copied from TSMC, can they keep up with R&D though? China is becoming an increasingly less desirable place to live, so just poaching Samsung and TSMC engineers and copying the process might be increasingly difficult. And I doubt they'll be able to build the tight relationship with machine designers/manufacturers like ASML that TSMC has.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#397

Post by dirtyid »

innovator116 wrote: post #356
dirtyid wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>prone to being embargoed Most US / global industries wouldn't be going anywhere without PRC supply chains / rare earth processing. Besides PRC is calorie self-sufficient and produces enough raw resources domestically for war economy, and export to west is like... 5% of GDP total, i.e. trivial in total war scenario. Now go look up how much steel, oil and other primary inputs PRC generates domestically... it wouldn't…

Without IPR restrictions, most of manufacturing can be quickly scaled up in places outside China. Also remember, India is nuclear power and understand Mutually Assured Destruction working between India and China.

>quickly scaled up

Quickly is more likely decades to reach appropriate as in case of rare earth processing. There's 20 years of supply chains entrenched in PRC that's not going to be replicated without substantial effort or time. That means allocating resources so strategic companies can survive while everyone else that relies on those inputs die. Btw, most of those experts needed to scale up elsewhere? They're from PRC in PRC building out PRC capacity for last 20 years. There's not enough experts globally to do such a task "quickly".

>Mutually Assured Destruction working between India and China

Yes, which is why the idea India would blockade PRC is fantasy. They fight with fists over barren rocks to prevent escalation spiral, and India has been firm in preventing QUAD into becoming a security alliance. They're not going to escalate to full scale war with PRC while eastern theatre command can shower most of India with missiles from barren Tibet while India has very limited ordnance to reach PRC strategic east coast or XJ. At least not for decades.

There will conceivably be a time when PRC is disentangled from global supplies chains or PRC neighbours have built sufficiently capabilities to target PRC cost free, but it won't be in short/medium term.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#398

Post by throwaway482 »

jollybean wrote: post #276
rjzzleep wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your little rant seems to have missed that these companies are still owned by Foxxconn and Luxshare. And while Foxxconn may be Taiwanese both the company and the owner are on very very friendly terms with China, which is unlikely to change. The world didn't start with 2022 Ukraine(even the Ukraine conflict didn't magically begin in 2022), most of these conflicts started long before Ukraine. The Indian foreign ministe…

Thankfully your little ranty response doesn't change the thesis at all. If a war broke out between Taiwan and China - Vietnamese operations would be able to continue irrespective of Foxxcon's ownership. Which is the whole point. The Indian foreign minister's comments are irrelevant in this context, and he's foolish to not contemplate the gravity of the war in Ukraine which has rattled the entire world economy. Actual…

India is overrated. It will never go to wars. so US should up ties with the Pakistan and Afghanistan, Remember its pakistan that defeated Russia in Afghanistan and also defeated America in Afghanistan with US AID. They have more caliber to defeat the next super power.

If Biden is smart, he should up the relationship with Pakistand and Afghanistan. its deadly combo

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#399

Post by yunohn »

pm90 wrote: post #395
Saigonauticon wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. Furniture companies use it a lot already. You can be licensed to import lumber, manufacture using local labor, and export -- without having a license to sell locally. We don't have SEZ, but do have big industrial / IT parks offering support for foreign enterprise. Some are pretty nice. Overall, the permitted activities on your business license matter. Getting licensed is usually easier than people think, excep…

It seems pretty silly to discourage sale of Vietnamese made furniture in Vietnam.

From my reading of the situation, it’s not discouraged, rather the companies would rather avoid finally paying tariffs and instead sell abroad. Not sure how significant the charges are?

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#400

Post by hintymad »

surement wrote: post #279
hintymad wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cheap labor the driving factor, though? I vaguely recall that the labor cost alone in China has not been the largest competitive advantage as the cost has been increasing steadily over years. Instead, it was the complete supply chain in China that out competes other countries. Bloomberg also reported an incident: Jobs wanted to change the cheap plastic screen to glass, and Foxconn was able to recruit more than 800…

> This level of efficiency used to belong to the US. I really hope US can revolutionize its manufacturing for this century. The US consistently increases its manufacturing output through improved automation. US workers are also significantly more productive than other countries', though US labor costs often cancel that advantage.

> US workers are also significantly more productive than other countries

I certainly hope so. Is it true, though? Obama's documentary, American Factory, says that Chinese workers are more efficient than their US counterparts. I also read somewhere that the average age of workers in shipyards were 55 years, IIRC, and it's harder to find qualified workers who can build heavy machineries in the US than in China, partly because the manufacturing sector shrank so much in the US.

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