FileMakerFeller

bloggerblog said:

I don't think Trump knows how to put 'America First', he's creating more enemies than friends.

American share markets first, then catastrophe on the world markets. "I'll be fine," thinks Trump. "My holdings are in real estate."

red oak said:

Excellent summary 

Even if you agree with the end goals,  the communications and execution of this tariff effort has been a complete sh*tshow.   The Admin better start signing great trade deals fast (eg.  IndIa, Taiwan, Japan, etc...) to re-gain momentum or this is going to a disaster.

And, Tim Cook bears major responsibility for backing Apple into a Chinese corner.   Why has he not at least tried to bring more manufacturing to the US?   Either final assembly using state of the art automation,  or pushing harder for parts vendors to do more manufacturing here?      The writing has been on the wall for 10+ years .  Your sitting on $150 billion in cash for fuckin* sake 

It's already a disaster. If the administration manages to sign some "great trade deals" they might just avoid the blame and/or the ire of the citizenry.

As for Tim's direction of Apple... none of this is happening in isolation. For efficiency of manufacture, you want all the components to be manufactured within a reasonable geographic distance of your assembly point (otherwise you're holding excess inventory to reduce the risks and costs of shipment) - this means that any labour cost differential is magnified across all of the components and subcomponents that go into the final product. Even if wages in the US were "only" double those in China, that's a big impact: market forces are such that actively seeking to pay more than double the cost for the same product will see any management team suffer dire consequences. That's why the manufacturing moved overseas in the first place; the cost savings were significant and management teams and investors got rewarded for cost reduction.

There are also arguments made about workforce availability, housing, transport and the sheer volume and variety of components. Apple is not the sole customer for most of the component manufacturers, and while it is an important enough customer to demand great pricing I doubt it has enough sway to demand the location of manufacture (unless it pays substantially more, which as stated above is a self-damaging move).

The way I see it, either the US workforce needs to accept a massive reduction in compensation, the US companies need to accept a massive increase in costs, or the manufacturing jobs remain where they are. Any change to the status quo will need to happen over a long-term timeframe so that the current shortcomings in US capabilities can be addressed.

mpantone said:

Huh, I apparently did not understand this particular issue perhaps because I have usually done so from the same county. It's strange that Apple would just bill every online tangible item as a sale from Cupertino.

It makes the accounting very simple. And back in the 1990s, when the arrangement was put in place, there was an attitude of preferring simple regulation (e.g. Section 230 of the Communications Act) in the hope that it would spur business success with this new-fangled Internet thing.

9secondkox2 said:

Strengthening the homeland is only a good thing in the face of increasingly adversarial moves by abusive regimes. 

Sigh. You think it's only the USA taking that stance?

Collaboration beats competition every time.

AppleInsider said:

... pill peddlers offering near mythical enhancement in one very, very specific area.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?