AppleZulu

9secondkox2 said:

AppleZulu said:

9secondkox2 said:

Xed said:

9secondkox2 said:

As I’ve been saying since before this whole thing happened. 

No, you said that the world has been ripping the US off and that Apple needs to bring manufacturing back to the US. Trump giving in yet again with this exemption doesn't hurt China and doesn't bring "jobs" back to the US. But nice try.

Wrong. I said all of the above - including that Apple would sail through due to exemptions. Mike W. even commented directly telling me "it's not going to go the way I think it will go" in response to one of my posts on the matter. I also added late that The USA has indeed been getting ripped in world trade forever now and that it's about time someone stands up to global bullies. Manufacturing does belong back in the USA - but also elsewhere. America doesn't need to abdicate all manufacturing. Much healthier to be both a product AND services economy. The fact is Trump is very easy to read and to predict when you realize that he has America's best interests at heart ad takes action accordingly. It is no surprise that he initiated reciprocal tariffs or that he paused them when the word wanted to make a deal. It's also not shocking at all that he kept up the tariffs on China, but did so in a way that doesn't hurt American companies (though it also weakens the tariff impact on China) - who he is doing this on behalf of. It's the art of the deal in action - set an extreme goal, get them scrambling, then when the entrenched positions are broken, maneuver the chess pieces, keep them guessing, and settle on the realistic area you wanted all along.I know it's popular on this site to hate on the man, but it doesn't make much sense. 

As I have been saying all along, Apple is going to be OK. They have someone standing up for them on the global stage. I have a sneaking suspicion that more is to come with the EU as well. 

Talk about the real TDS. 

Trump has no one’s interests at heart but his own. This was not some masterful “art of the deal.” This was and still is an economic clusterf*ck foisted on the world by an egomaniacal narcissist, surrounded by a bunch of servile sycophants who won’t tell him no, even if it means destroying the entire world economy. 

These are not even remotely “reciprocal tariffs.” They are simplistic ChatGPT math, based on individual trade deficits, not other countries’ tariffs imposed on US imports into their countries, all dumped on a chart like a list minute homework project where the assignment was “give me a chart of big tariffs on every country in the world, except Russia.” You can paint bullseyes around every one of Trump’s randomly thrown darts, but you’re not convincing anyone that any of it has been a carefully planned strategy. 

No matter what the guy does, you’ll find a reason to hate on the man. That’s “The real TDS.” Any time he does something that not even haters can hold against him, you’ll accuse him of painting a bullseye there. 

When I was a kid, there was this old lady who lived nearby. When she decided to not like someone, there was no getting in her hood side. If it was quiet in the neighborhood, she’d accuse our parents of being restrictive. If we were playing and making noise, our parents were suddenly too carefree. If we mowed the lawn, we were making a racket. If we didn’t, we were disorderly, etc. we learned that hee and others like hee are just going to be that way. Nothing you can do. So we always treated her with kindness but expected nothing in return. And sure enough, we got nothing but derogatory treatment. But that wouldn’t stop us from living out who we were at heart. We just did our best to be good neighbors and let her be who she was. Turns out she was a bitter person who couldn’t be at peace unless she had something to complain about. It was sad really. It was a great neighborhood for blocks around. But the only friends she had were a couple other older ladies who lived to find fault just like here. 

A better way would be to give someone the benefit of the doubt. You can question a certain move. But you can’t really proclaim it as a failure until it actually is one. And when a good move is made, it should be acknowledged as such. Not mental gymnastics about “oh someone must have moved the dartboard at light speed.” That just erases all credibility and ends up just constant, rambling complaining. 

I’ve been on this forum long enough to see that you’re a smart guy and post sensible things when certsin sensitive subjects are not in play. Don’t fall into that. You don’t have to like anyone. But fairness and objectivity are virtues to live by. 

If we look at Apple themselves, cook initiated reaching out to the president prior to him being president. I don’t remember that happening before (and gave more to trump than to bidens inaguration)  - not even in the midst of a time where Apple was getting eviscerated by foreign powers. I personally don’t think he had the confidence the previous folks would do anything about it. But he could have confidence that Donald Trump would. So perhaps he cozied up a bit. Cook may not even like trump. I don’t know. But if he could trust that the president would do the right thing, then that’s a plus, no matter how you try to spin it. Lobajd behild, the world gets put in notice, the eu isn’t so sure of itself and China grts tariffed with apple avoiding the pain thus far. That’s quite a detailed roadmap. Sometimes you just have to give credit where it’s due and leave the preconceived judgements at the doir. 

When a known arsonist is lighting the house on fire, it is unwise to wait until it has burned to the ground before objecting. Donald Trump is not just some "new guy" trying some unorthodox things that we should just wait and see if they work first. He is know a known entity, trying a bigger version of something that already failed once before, only now he has successfully surrounded himself with people who not only won't say "no," to him but who willingly participate in Cabinet meetings that consist of a round robin of gushing obsequious compliments and praise on the president. 

Tim Cook reached out to Trump not because he thinks he's great, but because Cook has extensive experience working with autocrats and has a pretty good idea what levers to pull and pockets to line in order to best position his company with said autocrats. Cook couldn't "trust that [Trump] would do the right thing." He knew from past experience that Trump was likely to do the wrong thing again, and so it would be beneficial to have access to appeal for exemptions from the wrong thing. Once again, if Trump had planned this out all along, he would have issued the exemptions with the initial order, and made it clear with his staff what that carve out would be, so that they wouldn't still be out there telling reporters that it isn't what it is, and if it is what it is, then it's only temporary. All the back-and-forth and on-again-off-again pauses and exemptions don't just keep those evil foreign countries guessing, it creates total chaos for American businesses that are trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do. 

A ridiculously large part of the American economy is driven by the Christmas shopping season. American retailers should right now be placing orders for all the stuff they want to sell this Christmas. A huge percentage of those orders would normally be manufactured in China, along with a handful of other mostly pacific rim countries. The current tariff chaos makes that process a live-or-die crapshoot for American companies and retailers. There is no way to know what those orders will cost when they enter US ports in October and November. They can set prices with the manufacturer, but that price after tariffs are applied could be anywhere from ten to two hundred percent higher. So do they place the orders and gamble that tariffs will be lower by then, or do they just sit this one out and cut their losses before putting money down? The one certainty is that there are no US manufacturers that could appear and scale up at a moment's notice to fill those orders for Christmas, 2025. It's the same dilemma faced by US farmers who were hammered during the last Trump tariff war, where China cancelled their orders and the Trump administration had to spend all of the tariff tax money they raised on bailing out farmers. Those farmers are now screwed again. It's Spring already. Seed and livestock orders are already in. Huge foreign markets are closing off, as are large orders usually made for USAID. Farmers with fields full of soybean sprouts can't turn on a dime and replant something more palatable to domestic tastes. They're screwed already. This policy is already an economic failure.

I am not just reflexively "hating on Trump." I am looking at the economic chaos he has introduced in just the last two weeks and recognizing the damage that has already been done and that won't just go away even if he wakes up tomorrow and withdraws every new tariff he announced this year. Even doing that would be like putting the car in reverse and backing up over the person he just ran over. The damage is already done. The problem is, he may have to back up the proverbial car to get it off the victim, but you're not going to convince anyone when you inevitably tell us what a hero he is for getting that car off that victim. Also, I'm not just "a hater" when I point out that he just ran over someone.

Chock_Mossley said:

I guess it's a good thing Apple has pushed so heavily into recycling, it could make this sting a bit less

The question is, are recycled rare earths and magnets exempt from China's export restrictions? If not, it won't matter where they're sourced from once they're brought into the assembly line in Chinese factories.

libertyandfree said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

DAalseth said:

China is NOT the only place on earth that has rare earth elements. Large deposits are in Canada, the US, Australia, and elsewhere. It’s just that China was the cheapest place to get them so the other sources have not been developed. It will take time to get the operations going, but the process was started during the first Trump term. 

This is mostly addressed in the article. The folks we've spoken to about it say that spinning up rare earths in the US will take at least another five years, if at all.

Just another great reason to get some of this critical production out of China who is not a friend of the US or the West.  China imposing these restrictions will accelerate the development in other geographic regions to produce these rare earths, and that’s a good thing. 

Sure. There are ways to pursue doing so that don't involve precipitating a disaster first. Donald Trump has turned the US into the Black Knight in the famous Monty Python sketch. 

9secondkox2 said:

avon b7 said:

9secondkox2 said:

As I said a long time ago, intelligent people are in charge snd apple will be ok. The president will have a way to navigate Apple through some difficult decidd add jobs. And it has come to pass. 

Cook was wise to open the door of discussion dnd thr president has been wise in response. 

I know it’s popular in this particular online space to detract from the president no matter what he does, but the fact is tarriffs are necessary -yet it’s sldd add o necessary to protect Americans and American companies. The idea is to put the pressure on other countries, particularly China - and not on American companies. 

It’s not changing mindset. It’s continuing forward motion, msnuevering as needed. That’s only good stuff snd Apple is the better for it. As this year marks time for my iPhone upgrade and early next is my next Mac purchase, I am a pretty happy potential customer right about now. 

If intelligent people were involved, surely none of this would have been necessary. 

He imposed tariffs. There were little to no exceptions. He let that situation sit while markets collapsed everywhere. He doubled down on there being no change of thought and barely hours after saying there would be no backing down, he did just that, suspending 'reciprocal' tariffs for 90 days. 

Then, late Friday exemptions were put in place.

By late Sunday we were being told there were no real exemptions (according to Lutnick) but a sort of pause within a pause and everyone was 'on the hook' (according to Trump) and that new tariffs were being devised to replace the original ones but they simply weren't ready and we know no one will even dare explain them (because they are being cooked up as we speak and don't exist). 

Even within the administration mixed messaging is emerging and now we are to believe Trump is 'flexible'?

It is nice to hear about walls and going over or below them, or even around them but the US decided to crash straight into them. 

There is no intelligence on show here. It's the complete opposite. Chaos and reaction to the problems chaos brings. 

Intelligence would never have seen this mess get to this point. 

Intelligence would not have seen Trump congratulating his pals for stock market gains hours before he announced another walk back (opening him up to valid insider trading accusations). 


Tim Cook and every CEO and small business owner in the US would know what trade policy is and be acting on it. That isn't happening because there is NO stable trade policy.

Everyone is running blind. 

Incorrect. It’s because of intelligent and good people that we are finally addressing long-standing abuses and doing so in a way that is benefitting Americans as much as possible and sparing collateral damage where possible. It’s not changing your mind when you planned to do something already. Trump hinted at this previously and we saw precedent in his first term. And that El Salvador president sure seemed to respect him tremendously. 

The right thing to do isn’t to continue to be ripped off. Nor is it to apply tarriffs without concern for American companies. 

People elected the president in a number of issues. This is one. The previous admin let American get bullied around. We saw a microcosm of that with Apple and the EU. That era is over. All of a sudden we hear the eu saying they’re willing to deal. We hear them second guessing their ridiculously exorbitant fees charged against Apple for stuff they make up as they go along. America is strong again. And as a result, so are Americans and our companies. This is good. A lot of mental acrobatics to try to spin it any other way. 

Your sycophancy is an embarrassment. The collateral damage is huge. Americans will be paying higher prices for cars, food, lumber, and the majority of every day items they buy online and at big box stores. None of this will yield in influx of new, high-paying jobs to offset the costs, certainly not anytime soon, and with continued flip-flops and insouciance from this administration, the jobs won't come later, either. Nobody makes major investments in an unstable market. The article above demonstrates how the exemptions for Apple that may or may not be exemptions and may or may not last, were an afterthought, not part of any plan. The collateral damage with our own allies means we are in a much weaker position to negotiate anything with China. A year ago, our European allies were strongly aligned with us and rapidly distancing themselves from China because of its overt support for Russia. Now, those European countries are re-examining their relationship with China, because at least it represents a more stable trading partner than the United States. So you go ahead and enjoy your maybe-tariff-exempted new iPhone upgrade, because it's coming at an enormous cost to all Americans. 

The El Salvadoran president likes Trump because Trump is paying him to like him, and offering to pay him a lot more to build gulags for US citizens as well. Like all of Trump's relationships this is entirely transactional.

You're the one engaging in mental acrobatics as you try to spin any of this as good for anyone but Donald Trump.

9secondkox2 said:

As I said a long time ago, intelligent people are in charge snd apple will be ok. The president will have a way to navigate Apple through some difficult decidd add jobs. And it has come to pass. 

Cook was wise to open the door of discussion dnd thr president has been wise in response. 

I know it’s popular in this particular online space to detract from the president no matter what he does, but the fact is tarriffs are necessary -yet it’s sldd add o necessary to protect Americans and American companies. The idea is to put the pressure on other countries, particularly China - and not on American companies. 

It’s not changing mindset. It’s continuing forward motion, msnuevering as needed. That’s only good stuff snd Apple is the better for it. As this year marks time for my iPhone upgrade and early next is my next Mac purchase, I am a pretty happy potential customer right about now. 

These are not intelligent people in charge. These are not good people in charge. Note that during this same meeting with the El Salvadoran president, not only did Trump offer doublespeak about never changing his mind while also changing his mind to benefit Apple, he said, in a hot-mic moment, “Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.” He wants more offshore torture prisons built so he can send US citizens out of the country, where he would be ‘powerless’ to bring them back. Let’s hope he changes his mind about that. But at least you’re a happy potential customer for your iPhone upgrade.