Stabitha_Christie
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Trump blinks: Floats suggestion that Apple might get a tariff exemption
9secondkox2 said:Stabitha_Christie said:9secondkox2 said:It’s not a “blink.” It has been mentioned a lot here on ai before the tariffs came on. Apple would get an exemption. I’ve personally posted this a few times.Smart people do smart things. It’s why cook preemptively met with the president prior to the election and why the admin is letting some of the fine tuning show now. It’s always shock and awe to rile up the immoveable players. Then settles into the details. It’s why you hear the phrase/torle “art of the deal” being so talked about lately.As I’ve BEEN saying, Apple willl be fine.
Meanwhile in reality Trump has shown how much of a lame duck president he is and U.S. is much weaker on the world stage than it was a week ago.
And because you pointed out in an other thread that you woefully uninformed on trade, let me help you out. What you and Trumpty Dumpty seem to be missing is Trump can't protect Apple or any other company from China. If China decides to start targeting U.S. companies like Apple or Tesla and just boots them from the country then they are absolutely screwed. The U.S. doesn't have the advanced manufacturing capabilities of China and that is something that would take at least a decade to build out. China does almost all of the world's refining of rare earth minerals. Replacing that capability will take a decade to do. China holds way more cards in this trade war than just tariffs. Turmpty Dumpty has brought a squirt gun to a gun fight.
Maybe, just maybe, ponder the potential consequences of Trumps actions rather than blindly cheerleading for himAnd I’ll take Donald trump and Bessent any day over some dude on the internet named “stabitha.”
But seriously. There are so many ways to look at this. It definitely exposes predispositions. If you already hate Tru p, you’ll work to find the pessimistic angle. If you already like him, you’ll work to find the positive angle. And if you’re just a simple common sense guy, you’ll work to can appreciate what he’s trying to do while retaining the ability to see where it may go wrong - but also retain tje ability to see where it may go right. So far, for common sense folks, tje goal is admirable, results are mixed with the short time in action, and the pivot seems to preserve both the American tech company as well as the inherits of the action to begin with. The downside of all of it is of course the “short term pain” of stock volatility and posdible higher prices. But that was always a known quantity. Not some surprise. But the long term gain of fair trade is what the goal is. And it’s certainly at the very least worth the attempt. If it wasn’t trump, it would be someone else. The status quo is not sustainable without ceding our economy and leading status in the world. As one of the few truly free places in the world, this matters. We are all her for all things apple. They’re a great company. Another reason they're great is that they stand for human rights, privacy, security, etc. on top of making the best stuff on earth. But take away the foundation of freedom upon which they operate and things go south. We see a microcosm in the EU and China. Hopefully, with the bold moves being made on the big stage, that’s as far as it goes.Let's take a step back and start at the beginning, as there is a lot we agree on. So let's look at how the U.S. got into this situation.If you go back to the boom years of the 1940s-1960s, the U.S. was a manufacturing economy, and it served us well. We had a lot of upward mobility. Along the way, we chose to move toward a more services-based economy. We embraced free trade capitalism and let the markets figure it out. And when I say we, I mean our collective decision-making via the democratic process. No individual or party really owns the decisions; the country collectively decided to do these things. During that time, China decided to become a manufacturing economy. To do that, the Chinese government invested in infrastructure and education. It helped companies set up manufacturing in exchange for manufacturing technology. It was playing the long game, but it worked. It is also far easier for an autocratic government to do this because there is no need for consensus. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the transition to services served us well. We saw wealth explode, and we became the world's richest country. Unfortunately, this move left people behind. The areas that lost manufacturing work weren't always able to join in on the services economy explosion. Towns and smaller cities got hit particularly hard. But it is important to know that the U.S. isn't the victim of another country. This was our own decision-making, and China didn't become a manufacturing powerhouse because of tariffs. They did it via investment. And we lost manufacturing through a lack of investment. We opted for tax cuts instead.So where do we as a country want to go? I think most of us can agree that we would like to see a return of manufacturing to the U.S. We would like to see a return to upward mobility for the people left behind. We would like the economic growth that would come with it. There is an argument for national security and self-reliance. No matter your political stripes, I think we all agree those are good things. Trump has stated these things as his goals, and I don't think many people are objecting to the goals. What people are objecting to is how he is trying to achieve those goals.The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure nor the skilled labor to do manufacturing at a large scale. Building that skill set and infrastructure needs to be done, and it is a long process. China didn't do it overnight. Tariffs have their place in repatriating manufacturing, but they aren't the primary tool in making it happen, and they won't do it alone. It needs to be a comprehensive plan, and everyone needs to be on board with it. It needs to include investments in infrastructure and education. Private capital will have its place, but the movement needs to step up and lead the effort. The U.S. government has more resources than any entity on the planet and is able to do incredible things. Private capital has never been able to make the monumental shifts the government has done. Private equity didn't do rural electrification. Commercial space travel only happened because of the work NASA did. The entirety of the internet economy exists because of the government's ARPANET project. What we need is to start doing investment in education and infrastructure, and as our manufacturing capacity expands, then we offer incentives for companies to start repatriating and investing in manufacturing. Lastly, and this is where tariffs come in, we need to have a stick for when the incentives don't work. Due to the amount of time it is going to take, the plan also needs to be bipartisan; it will need to be continued over multiple presidential administrations and multiple congressional election cycles. Without commitment from both parties, it will just die on the vine as soon as power shifts.This brings up the Trump administration. They have not offered a comprehensive plan. All they have offered is a stick. They have offered no solution for how companies are going to repatriate manufacturing. They haven't even explained what they are going to do with the money they make from the tariffs. So, let's say Apple or any other tech company wants to repatriate its manufacturing immediately. It literally cannot do it. There is nowhere to move it to and there is no skilled workforce to do it. They are 100% on the hook for trying to build out the infrastructure and solve educating the workforce. At a bare minimum, the tariffs needed to be phased in to give companies an opportunity to solve the challenges related to bringing manufacturing back. You can certainly point to exceptions being made, but those just remove the incentive to do anything, and since Trump is in his second term, the best bet is to just ride out the four years and wait for the next guy to come along and just undo all of this. So, the solution requires a long-term plan, investments in education, investments in infrastructure, and it needs to be bipartisan. What Trump is doing is more tax cuts, gutting the Department of Education, gutting the government as a whole, random tariffs that may or may not be happening, and a lack of bipartisanship. Not only is his approach lacking bipartisan support, people in his own party are so against what he is doing that they want to introduce legislation to limit his ability to implement tariffs. The result has been needless economic upheaval, damaging the reputation of the U.S., and the majority of the population being pissed at him. Again, it's not the goals that are the issue; it is the how that is the issue. The how makes no sense and will not accomplish the goals.A good example of how things should work is the CHIPS Act. Through incentives, the government was able to stimulate processor fabrication in the U.S. The whole thing was inciting enough that TSCM is interested in moving fabrication here. It is bipartisan, so companies aren't worried about the incentives being here one day and disappearing the next. That leads to long-term commitments. Was it perfect? No. But it is a good blueprint on how to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and it does so without crashing markets or chaos in general. This is the kind of thing we should be urging our politicians to do.
TLDR; Trade wars are stupid and accomplish nothing. They shouldn't be our go to. We need to stop acting like we are victim of other countries because we won't acknowledge our own mistakes. Let's just roll up our sleeves and do the hard work needed to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. -
No, Apple is not going to delete the Clown emoji from the iPhone
Cesar Battistini Maziero said:Having a different opinion is not hate. Lefties are the ones that can't handle a discussion. -
Meta CEO mocks Apple for 'sitting on' iPhone 20 years later despite doing the same with Fa...
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UK secretly orders Apple to let it spy on iPhone users worldwide
Xed said:CheeseFreeze said:beowulfschmidt said:Apple could also just pull out of the UK entirely, fire all their UK employees, and stop buying UK goods and services. I know they won't, but feck all fascist governments.
Fascism is a far-right system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
The U.K. is capitalist, and we can certainly argue that this would be a stringent movement control the rest of the definition doesn't fit at all. There U.K. isn't governed by the far-right, it isn't a dictatorship, there isn't violent suppression of opposition and the list goes on. So, yeah, not fascism at all -
Trump has a problem with Tim Cook, because Foxconn is building factories in India
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China calls Trump's trade war a joke, jumps tariffs on U.S. goods to 125%
9secondkox2 said:Time to push China tariffs to 225%.China lives and breathes the US dollar.The US is addicted to Chinese imports.But America can just as easily wait out some production relocation or shift habits.China won’t be recovering thst money.Apple is already reallocating the weight of production. It will take a bit. But it will be done. It’s just too bad that there aren’t more truly free nations to move it to.The only way the USA wins this is to keep its foot in the gas and not give in to bullies. We’ve been pushed around and robbed long enough. As O’Leary said:enough is enough.” Time to get back. -
It's still cheaper to import iPhones with 25% tariffs, than assemble in the US
22july2013 said:Given a choice between two identical products (like iPhones, forks, or cashew nuts) where one says "Made in X," where X is a dictatorship, and the other says "Made in Y," where Y is a democracy, I would pay for the one made in Y, even if it's at a much higher price. I realize not many people care about human rights or the environment like I do. I haven't met a single person who shares my values and would buy the higher priced item. -
Trump's new China trade deal is still bad for US business & consumers
I don't know where the saying originated but Molly Ivins was the first person I heard use, anyway it goes; "It's one thing to step on your own d!ck, it's another to jump up and down on it yelling 'Hey! Look at me'." The Trump administration are the masters of the latter.
They created the problem and now want credit for a partial fix? Where is the actual trade deal? Is China going invest in manufacturing in the U.S.? Nope. Is China going to enter advanced manufacturing technology sharing agreement with the U.S.? Nope. Is China going to address fentanyl imports coming from China to the U.S.? Nope. Are American's going to pay higher taxes for goods? Yep, and that is it. This doesn't even constitute a trade deal. It's a tax increase and that is it.
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Trump's 25% smartphone tariff starts just in time for the iPhone 17
9secondkox2 said:Make
s sense. If cook said he was going to build at home snd thrn got some exemptions, but then gave indication of going back on his word, then the tarriffs would factor again.Pretty sure if cook committee to doing SOMETHING in the usa soon, there would be no tarriffs.Apple has escaped so far. And now they’re in tje hot seat. Hopefully they make the right decision and do something back home.It’s a tough spot. But it’s also important to make the hard decisions today in order to secure a brighter tomorrow. -
What Apple products will get hit the hardest by Trump's new tariff orders
So, the tariffs were announced in April and then delayed for 90 days. At the point where the tariff were delayed we were promised "90 deals in 90 days" In that time Trump claimed he had made deals with 200 countries despite there not being 200 countries to actually make deals with. This week we will hit the 90 days with exactly two deals made. That is a well short of the 90 promised and well below the 200 that Trump claimed he had done. So, what does the Trump and is band of clowns do? Announce even more tariffs and immediately delay them for almost 30 days.
Any country watching this clown show has learned two things.- Trump and team have no actual plan are just making this up as they go along.
- They can safely ignore his bluster, he will always chicken out and kick the traiff can down the road. This dog has no bite.
This cult will make excuses for this and repeat whatever inane talking points Dear Leader gives this and the rest of the country will just be embarrassed on their behalf.