Google/Motorola tried this before, but it didn't work out: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27643474 I don't know what went wrong there, or what lessons could have been learned.
Actually, that's interesting in that 1. they imply that it wasn't a "made in USA" issue and that the problem was just that they were only making the Moto X there and it didn't do well in the market, and 2. "Motorola says that the Moto X smartphone will still continue to be manufactured at plants in China and Brazil." -> if they're still making stuff in Brazil, that implies that it's really not as simple as "can't make anything outside of China".
I applaud this accomplishment. I think there will be a push to manufacture more semiconductor-intensive products in the US over the next several years as tensions with China continue to heat up and Taiwan is left as a single point of failure. I know progress is already being made with TSMC building new fabs in the US. I will note that Purism do not say what their production capacity is, and that it would probably be…
> I’m not surprised that manufacturing thousands of extremely expensive phones in the US is possible. I would be a lot more surprised if they had managed to manufacture millions of reasonably priced phones in the US. I'm pretty naive on the subject, but in this case why would cost of local labor affect which product is manufactured at any given plant? Lets say employees A and B are payed $50 and $20 respectively for…
I don't quite follow the question you're asking, but the argument I was making is one about economies of scale. Manufacturing small quantities of expensive products is comparatively easy, at the extreme end you could have a single craftsman building every phone and selling them for $5000 each. If you need to manufacture a million phones though, you're going to need more than one guy, and the facility is going to be radically different as well. The reason phones aren't manufactured in the US is not because nobody in the US knows how to make a single phone or even thousands of them, it's because factories like Foxconn which employ over a million people to churn out millions of phones and other products just do not exist, and there might not even be enough excess labor capacity to build them.
$800 (down from $900) for the Librem 5; $2000 for the Librem 5 USA edition. (Edit: I'm leaving this paragraph here as it attracted comments that would no longer make sense if I edited/removed, but it was a result of a flawed premise [bad math in my head]) That seems a significant premium over the actual cost differential, but they self-admit "this is for customers who have hard requirements on sourcing" rather than "…
Seems like this is priced for military & contractors. Genuinely hope they can find success in that niche. Even if their products never compete with the iPhone in ubiquity, having a domestic company with full stack hardware manufacturing experience is a tremendous asset both to the country and to other companies who aspire to bring their own manufacturing stateside.
Could it be possible they would run a specific batch for the military or intelligence industry?
> I think the answers “yes”, if the demand is there. It's not a question of demand. A negligible number of customers care where their product is manufactured. They care only about price, which is why manufacturing moved overseas in the first place. What is needed to manufacture phones in the West is protectionism and mercantilism. Our governments would have to subsidize domestically manufactured products, require the…
> It's politically unpopular for the same reason action on climate change is unpopular: it makes everything more expensive. You've got this backwards. Both taking action on climate change and buying American are popular [1][2]. Furthermore I don't know of much evidence that suggests taking action on climate change will raise prices. But you are right about protectionism in that way. That's the biggest problem here. I…
having the government buy American is popular according to that link, not actually doing it yourself.
> It's politically unpopular for the same reason action on climate change is unpopular: it makes everything more expensive. You've got this backwards. Both taking action on climate change and buying American are popular [1][2]. Furthermore I don't know of much evidence that suggests taking action on climate change will raise prices. But you are right about protectionism in that way. That's the biggest problem here. I…
having the government buy American is popular according to that link, not actually doing it yourself.
having the government buy American is popular according to that link, not actually doing it yourself.
This is a difficult question to poll because in a great sense actions speak louder than words, but what information I can find suggests similar preferences among consumers themselves: https://review.chicagobooth.edu/marketing/2020/article/made-... See also: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-buyamerican-poll/amer...
I just found it funny that your provided link starts with a sentence containing "has not made Americans more willing to pay extra for U.S.-made goods."
There is also debate on if the US should invest in that. Political tensions with China are one factor. However remember there are limited resources so investing in this means something else can't be invested in. Really this should be a world wide concern: if China is so bad how can we build up someone more friendly - it need not be the US. Could be Germany, could be Kenya (I understand China is investing there)
I agree, but part of the problem with manufacturing in China is that American companies have become complicit in the abuses of a brutal authoritarian regime. The manufacturing efficiencies cannot be ignored, but it would be wise to take this into consideration as well moving forward. I’m just not sure if there’s a reasonable way to do so. This may be an inevitable consequence of globalization in the short-term.
Why is complicity in abuse of populations suddenly a problem? The US imprisons more than China does, forces citizens to work through a yet-unresolved pandemic that disproportionately impacts already marginalized and abused segments of the population, and furnishes private companies with prison labor for $1 an hour when the prisoners are not being made to fight forest fires or being abused (or killed) by law enforcement or each other.
I think the companies have the stomach for more and that it’s mainly a marketing and public relations issue.
I applaud this accomplishment. I think there will be a push to manufacture more semiconductor-intensive products in the US over the next several years as tensions with China continue to heat up and Taiwan is left as a single point of failure. I know progress is already being made with TSMC building new fabs in the US. I will note that Purism do not say what their production capacity is, and that it would probably be…
> I’m not surprised that manufacturing thousands of extremely expensive phones in the US is possible. I would be a lot more surprised if they had managed to manufacture millions of reasonably priced phones in the US. I'm pretty naive on the subject, but in this case why would cost of local labor affect which product is manufactured at any given plant? Lets say employees A and B are payed $50 and $20 respectively for…
I'm not sure I understand the question: What are the two products you are swapping between the employees?
Problems with scaling production also are more complex than just labor cost, especially when starting up.
This is a difficult question to poll because in a great sense actions speak louder than words, but what information I can find suggests similar preferences among consumers themselves: https://review.chicagobooth.edu/marketing/2020/article/made-... See also: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-buyamerican-poll/amer...
I just found it funny that your provided link starts with a sentence containing "has not made Americans more willing to pay extra for U.S.-made goods."
Well, I think the government buying American is probably a precursor for anyone else doing so, because they're not at the constraints of the market to find the cheapest viable product.
> I’m not surprised that manufacturing thousands of extremely expensive phones in the US is possible. I would be a lot more surprised if they had managed to manufacture millions of reasonably priced phones in the US. I'm pretty naive on the subject, but in this case why would cost of local labor affect which product is manufactured at any given plant? Lets say employees A and B are payed $50 and $20 respectively for…
I don't quite follow the question you're asking, but the argument I was making is one about economies of scale. Manufacturing small quantities of expensive products is comparatively easy, at the extreme end you could have a single craftsman building every phone and selling them for $5000 each. If you need to manufacture a million phones though, you're going to need more than one guy, and the facility is going to be r…
I must have misunderstood your point. I thought you were arguing that manufacturers who produces a variety of products with plants in the US and Taiwan can only afford to make their expensive products in the US because only those products have the margins to offset the relatively high US labor costs.
But from your response (and on re-reading your original post) it sounds like you're actually pointing out that high-volume manufacturers with thin margins have more trouble justifying high US labor costs - in contrast to low-volume manufacturers with high margins.