Donald Trump said:
“we’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries”
John Gruber digs in to the logic:
The U.S. can’t compete with China on wages. It can’t compete on the size of the labor force. China has had a decades-long push in its education system to train these workers; the U.S. has not. And the U.S. doesn’t have the facilities or the proximity to the Asian component manufacturers.
The only way these jobs are coming back to the US is via legally mandated means (a government tariff or trade restriction of some kind). Economically, it just doesn’t make sense, or the jobs would never have left.
If the jobs come back to the US, in order for Apple to keep their products competitive in price, the work force would have to be paid an amount that only illegal immigrants would be able to work for. Apple used to make their computers in the US back in the day, which was one of the reasons Macs cost so much. In order to compete with other computer manufacturers who were based in Asia, Apple had to move their assembly operations overseas to knock down costs.
Or they’ll have to automate the whole process.
Also recently wage in China as risen to the point where the they have to start outsource manufacturing to even poorer countries.
While I agree that the SHORT TERM solution won’t really work…. but think the LONG TERM solution will. Sure, Apple would have to pay people more $$ to assemble things… however, they would be making more $$ than they probably make now, giving them more $$ to spend on Apple products, even with a higher cost. Look at Walmart…. finally realizing that the low wages they pay their employees isn’t enough for them to buy products at Walmart. Pay them, and all workers more money, and the entire economic system rises. Yes, products would be more expensive… but yes, people would be paid more as well. No reason this can’t be done, except for the exorbitant wages and benefits paid to CEO’s, et al.
I thought Apple already assembled some of their Mac Pros in the US?
Yes, but that’s gotta be Apple’s lowest-volume product by some orders of magnitude. (Sells in the thousands of units instead of by the hundred millions)
At which point, that’s a ton of assembly jobs that are going to be completely eliminated. (If Apple goes with the automation route).
That said, I’m baffled why anyone would think Americans would ever want to work for peanuts assembling iPhones. They don’t have the incentive or the work ethic to do the job.
“The only way these jobs are coming back to the US is via legally mandated means (a government tariff or trade restriction of some kind). “
even that won’t work. Gruber, if anything, understates the case. We simply do not have the workforce here to produce things like the iPhone at scale. It’s not even the assembly work that’s the hard part. It’s the skilled labor, the tool and die makers etc, that aren’t around and if we trained those people they’d be worth so much that the price of everything would have to skyrocket to keep margins.
Once upon a time West did steal Chinese and Indian jobs
using Slave Labor, By Copying, By Stealing seeds, By Criminalizing
Craft.
White Boys wringing their hands don’t seem to remember that part of
their story.
Absolutely true, and something often overlooked. My parents’ hometown has been on an economic slide for decades as its industries moved to China, but cost was only part of the picture: The presumed “next generation” of the work force had no interest in manufacturing. You can only run a plant for so long with aging workers whose retirement plans are hitting vestment.
The few companies still sticking it out are offering ridiculous salaries just to get talent in the door. “There’s no reason we can’t do this here” is a great sentiment, but great sentiments don’t magically train and produce an ample supply of a nearly-extinct workforce.
Yep. In general, we’ve demonized blue collar work despite the fact that some varieties of it require real skill and pay quite well.
If your prime component is labor, and you can’t compete on the price of labor, then everything follows you down that path.
It’s catch 22