They could even waive the tariffs and it would still be impractical to assemble in the US. The only way it’s practical here is with near full automation, and even then it’s probably still cheaper in China.
Apple spent literal decades training workers over there, and the Chinese government busted up Apple and all their workers went to competitors…
Like, sure, someone has to assemble the screws but it didn’t take Apple 20 years of investment to just teach them to use a screwdriver. It’s skilled labor.
Jon Stewart had some guy that wrote a book on it a week or two ago.
There’s some skilled labor, sure, but most of it is processes, and those can be replicated elsewhere. Apple brought the processes and refined them with local labor. But none of it is so special that it can’t be replicated elsewhere in a couple years (assuming facilities exist).
Look at phone repair, you can go to any mall and a teenager can disassemble and reassemble your phone with only a month or so of training. Making that process efficient is the hard part, and that only requires a few skilled jobs in a factory of thousands. The vast majority of jobs in assembly are pretty unskilled.
Apple isn’t in the process of spending billions over decades to train people just to install screws…
Like, fuck Apple, I’ve never owned a single Apple product. But they wouldn’t have spent that much for so long to train people for unskilled labor.
Quick edit:
Apple in China[1] is a 2025 book by Patrick McGee[2][3][4] (Financial Times reporter[5] from 2013 to 2023[6]), about how Apple Inc. invested in China in order to build iPhones and other technology, and by doing so helped China become more competitive. In the book, McGee says that under Tim Cook Apple invested $275 billion over five years from 2016. McGee compares this to the Marshall Plan as this is in excess of other corporate spending. McGee says the Marshall Plan was about half Apple’s investment, in real terms.
Sure, but it does cost that much to build a suite of factories complete w/ automation and whatnot. Buildings are expensive, especially high tech ones, but that doesn’t mean the labor involved is particularly high skill. Components, processes, software, etc are still largely designed by highly skilled workers in western countries.
Yes, there are some skilled jobs there, but the ratio is much lower for the employees in China than domestically.
What’s important to note is all the pieces that get screwed together are still made over there…
We can pay tariffs on all the pieces and screw them together here, but that’s going to essentially have the same tariff costs as a completed iPhone.
Having someone screw the pieces together here would also raise costs due to labor costs. But they’re two completely different things.
Quick edit:
Times author is legitimately named “Trip” and started out as a sports writer before pivoting to “apple, bourbon, and beer”.
These days it might just be AI, but if it’s a human it’s almost certainly a nepo hire…
They could even waive the tariffs and it would still be impractical to assemble in the US. The only way it’s practical here is with near full automation, and even then it’s probably still cheaper in China.
Labor and land are just so much cheaper there.
Apple spent literal decades training workers over there, and the Chinese government busted up Apple and all their workers went to competitors…
Like, sure, someone has to assemble the screws but it didn’t take Apple 20 years of investment to just teach them to use a screwdriver. It’s skilled labor.
Jon Stewart had some guy that wrote a book on it a week or two ago.
There’s some skilled labor, sure, but most of it is processes, and those can be replicated elsewhere. Apple brought the processes and refined them with local labor. But none of it is so special that it can’t be replicated elsewhere in a couple years (assuming facilities exist).
Look at phone repair, you can go to any mall and a teenager can disassemble and reassemble your phone with only a month or so of training. Making that process efficient is the hard part, and that only requires a few skilled jobs in a factory of thousands. The vast majority of jobs in assembly are pretty unskilled.
Apple isn’t in the process of spending billions over decades to train people just to install screws…
Like, fuck Apple, I’ve never owned a single Apple product. But they wouldn’t have spent that much for so long to train people for unskilled labor.
Quick edit:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China
275,000,000,000 over five years…
That’s 55 billion a year, for five years straight.
It doesn’t cost that much to train someone to put a screw in
Sure, but it does cost that much to build a suite of factories complete w/ automation and whatnot. Buildings are expensive, especially high tech ones, but that doesn’t mean the labor involved is particularly high skill. Components, processes, software, etc are still largely designed by highly skilled workers in western countries.
Yes, there are some skilled jobs there, but the ratio is much lower for the employees in China than domestically.
You can just keep repeating the same thing over and over again despite it being wrong…
Doesn’t make it true tho, just makes other people eventually stop responding