Looks like somebody is taking Trump’s demand for U.S. manufacturing seriously. Cheap labor is the ONLY thing keeping U.S. companies in China. As the middle class rises and labor gets more expensive things could change. The next source of cheap labor is India. By the time that labor pool has been fully exploited the maunfacturing process will be completely automated, no labor needed. Just my opinion of course.
Foxconn is not a US company. China did not approach Apple to build their products in China. Apple is not the one with plants in China. Apple are not the one assembling their iPhones, iPads, iPods and laptops in Apple plants with cheap China labor. Apple contract that out to Foxconn. Apple is not a manufacturing company. For sure Apple is benifiting from the cheap labor in China, but if Foxconn or any other company were to assemble Apple products in the US at a reasonable cost, compared to what it cost now, then we'll see more Apple products made in the USA. With high tech products, human labor is not always the most expensive component to consider. Robots works for nearly the same wages, no matter where they are. The licensing agreements are probably a greater percentage of the cost than the labor, even if it were made in the US. It's not like manufacturing shoes or purses or luggage.
Looks like somebody is taking Trump’s demand for U.S. manufacturing seriously. Cheap labor is the ONLY thing keeping U.S. companies in China. As the middle class rises and labor gets more expensive things could change. The next source of cheap labor is India. By the time that labor pool has been fully exploited the maunfacturing process will be completely automated, no labor needed. Just my opinion of course.
Since the example of post-war Japan's incredible transformation, this has been demonstrated to be completely untrue.
Looks like somebody is taking Trump’s demand for U.S. manufacturing seriously. Cheap labor is the ONLY thing keeping U.S. companies in China. As the middle class rises and labor gets more expensive things could change. The next source of cheap labor is India. By the time that labor pool has been fully exploited the maunfacturing process will be completely automated, no labor needed. Just my opinion of course.
Its not JUST cheap labor...its also skill sets and the ability to gather very large amounts of workers in a short period of time. I seriously doubt Apple/Foxconn could pull together 50,000 workers in the US and train them in the same amount of time Foxconn does in China. If Apple were to ever assemble anything in the US it would more more automated than it is in China.
Agreed, it's not just cheap labor, but to take it a step further it's not just the skilled labor force either. It's all about the larger support structure. The factories themselves are already built, the availability of raw materials, shipping infrastructure and components provided by the ecosystem, local to the point of manufacture. There are far too many reasons manufacturing won't come to the states.
The comment regarding india by the OP is way off. People in India already make more money than Chinese workers, not to mention India (as Apple has discovered) is very protectionist. In order to sell iPhones there, Apple has already started building assembly plants and support sites for IT etc. and even still they won't actually manufacture anything from raw materials and it's still taking years to iron out including re-writing laws.
Plus my takeaway from the the article is not that Trump's demand is being taken seriously, it's the exact opposite. The Chinese listened, politely smiled, turned around and then laughed at the idea. They know there are far too many road blocks.
The Trump supporters on this site make me laugh. They all have a total disconnect from the details of reality, just like the fleshy cheeto they worship. The US would probably suffer more as the result of a trade war with China, than China itself. The rest of the world still needs China's scale of production. It would take a decade for the US to catch up, at an enormous expense that we simply can't afford so long as we are the world police. Now, if you want to pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and close our bases in Asia and Europe and repurpose maybe 20% of our military spending to rebuild and re-educate, perhaps we could do it, but allot of things need to change first. It's far easier to say it, than to actually do it.
You delusional liberals make me laugh. China would suffer more than the U.S. in a trade war. Sure, companies like Apple would be affected in the short term. China is more dependent on trade with the U.S. as a percentage of their GDP. Most of China's trade surplus is with the U.S. U.S. companies in China can move their supply chain if a trade war were too happen. Its foolish to think China is laughing at Trump. I'm sure they aren't laughing at Trump when it comes to North Korea.
Everyone would fracking suffer and Apple would be devastated and anyone using "liberal": as an insult should STFU.
Looks like somebody is taking Trump’s demand for U.S. manufacturing seriously. Cheap labor is the ONLY thing keeping U.S. companies in China. As the middle class rises and labor gets more expensive things could change. The next source of cheap labor is India. By the time that labor pool has been fully exploited the maunfacturing process will be completely automated, no labor needed. Just my opinion of course.
India does have cheap labor, but not skilled like China. China use to have the same issue, lots of people but their quality output sucked. China did what no other country has done which is to make sure their work forces was taught the skills need to do the job, China's quality output in greatly improved over the last 15 yrs. I have not see similar from China. To your other point Automation will leapfrog the next manufacturing wave. India may not have work for those who are not educated and their is no way India can make IT works out 1B people. Right now India's solution it to make people into IT workers, and they think that through more IT works at a problem will solve any problem, my person experience, their more people is better actually has cause more problems.
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India does have cheap labor, but not skilled like China. China use to have the same issue, lots of people but their quality output sucked. China did what no other country has done which is to make sure their work forces was taught the skills need to do the job, China's quality output in greatly improved over the last 15 yrs. I have not see similar from China. To your other point Automation will leapfrog the next manufacturing wave. India may not have work for those who are not educated and their is no way India can make IT works out 1B people. Right now India's solution it to make people into IT workers, and they think that through more IT works at a problem will solve any problem, my person experience, their more people is better actually has cause more problems.