“Donald Trump says that if he becomes president, he will ‘get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China,'” Konstantin Kakaes writes for MIT Technology Review. “Bernie Sanders has also called for Apple to manufacture some devices in the U.S. instead of China.”
“Neither candidate could instantly make that happen,” Kakaes writes. “As Steve Jobs once told President Obama when he asked why Apple didn’t make phones in its home country, the company didn’t hire manufacturers in China only because labor is cheaper there. China also offered a skilled workforce and flexible factories and parts suppliers that can, Apple believes, retool more quickly than their American counterparts.”
“But set that aside for now, and imagine that Apple persuaded one of its Chinese manufacturers to open factories in the United States or did that itself. Could it work? Apple could profitably produce iPhones in America, as some high-end Mac computers are produced, without making them much more expensive,” Kakaes writes. “There’s a catch, though, that undermines Trump’s and Sanders’s arguments.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The U.S. doesn’t want those kinds of subsistence-level (or worse) assembly jobs. Today, in a global economy, where great wage disparities exist, those type of jobs generally cost more than they are worth as they simply don’t pay enough to allow people to live independently. They’ll soon be replaced by robots anyway. You want the types of high-paying jobs that Apple has already proven to have created in droves.
The ultimate goal is what Steve Jobs always wanted all along: Automated assembly via robotics.
They don’t sleep, they don’t strike or make demands, they don’t jump off buildings or die in dust fires, most of them don’t even need the lights on. They just make what you program them to make, the same way every time, with quality control that no human line can ever match.
“I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” – Steve Jobs, February 1990
SEE ALSO:
Donald Trump’s plan for American-made iPhones would be disastrous – March 30, 2016
Robots, not people, led Apple to make new Mac Pro in the U.S.A. – January 21, 2014
Rush Limbaugh: Apple products create jobs in America – October 18, 2012
How Romney and/or Obama should have answered Candy Crowley’s Apple assembly question – October 17, 2012
Romney and Obama spar over Apple’s Mac, iPad, and iPhone manufacturing jobs – October 17, 2012
Apple, Steve Jobs, Obama, America and a squeezed middle class – January 21, 2012
Apple’s real market value: How many U.S. jobs it creates – November 21, 2011
iOS developer salaries skyrocket – November 9, 2011
How many U.S. jobs has Apple’s iPod created? – July 8, 2011
“they don’t jump off buildings”
The suicides at Foxconn were incredibly overblown, considering they have roughly a million employees. For one thing, the suicide rate at Foxconn at its peak was lower than for China as a whole; the suicide rate for American college students is four times higher.
And something the media almost NEVER mentions: some of these workers killed themselves to make money for their families. For a while, families of suicide victims received relatively healthy “compensation” for their losses.
No one is saying working on an assembly line is fun or fulfilling. But Foxconn is no better, no worse than a lot of factories around the world. Just bigger.
First thing I did when I heard about these “mass suicides” is find out how many people worked for Foxconn and then find out what the average number is for a population of that size. Sure enough, the number of suicides was about the same number for any group of 1 million people.,
Never let proper data analysis get in the way of a good meme.
Instead of wasting time and money bringing iPhone manufacturing back to the USA, why not set up a new electric car manufacturing industry in the USA and start exporting to the world?
Does this perhaps means it’s most sensical for MDN ( and other Apple Americans ) to vote for a candidate, instead of a brand? ( Republican / Democrat / Red Team / Blue Team / Donkey / Elephant )
Politics has become more like a sporting tournament than about job qualifications. Team color, mascot, point-scoring. Kind of takes the focus off the important talking points, doesn’t it?
No reason a robotics facility assembling Apple devices couldn’t be built here and what supervisory, loading and maintenance jobs that would result that could be nicely paid jobs.
If we keep trying real hard, we can probably get Apple to move their headquarters to Singapore or similar location. America is not the biggest market in the world. Trump went bankrupt four times. The fifth time will be the US treasury if he gets elected. I am getting real tired of politicians who have business advice for Apple. One might get confused and think the US government has a good balance sheet.
Politicians need to simplify the tax codes, reduce corporation taxes and also execute the cash hoarding in overseas so corporation can repatriate their frozen, dust-collected money home.
By the way, back then we want Apple make more intelligent iPhone with a flying cars, printed money, gourmet dinners, etc on this forum of MDN, we mention about the flying cars, today Google co-founder Page backing two start-ups making flying cars: Bloomberg Shall we ask Google for loyalty?.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-co-founder-page-backing-two-start-ups-183512165–sector.html
Here’s some advice. Ignore what the candidates have to say until after Labor Day. (and maybe after that too)
Build those facilities here.
Adjusted based salary for North America.
iPhone retail price up 48%.
Way to go Murica!
Anybody who’s seen Liam knows the writing is on the wall.
Is it fair to say the Mac Pro is produced in America when most of the parts come from abroad?
and with the cost Of Made in America- who is going to buy more expensive phones? nobody
Returning the subject jobs into the US also returns the resultant environmental pollution produced by the manufacturing processes.
Everyone should know that we don’t have factories here that have 50,000 people ….we could not build the iPhone here if we wanted to…Our lovely two candidates we have a choice of are idiots!
It isn’t just about the assembly-line people. Tooling up for new devices requires thousands (10,000s?) of engineers – skilled positions.
D I S I N G E N U O U S
Obviously, that’s not going to happen in today’s manufacturing environment and the candidates know it. It’s ridiculousness for the sake of voter attention. When the promise is broken, ‘Hey, it’s not my fault!’, the usual political garbage.
Now, does Apple have to throw their manufacturing money at China: Criminal Nation? NO! And they know it. There are FAR more worthy countries who would gladly manufacture for Apple at the same low wages. (My usual rant).
No surprise that Trump tries to con and defraud people into thinking he can bring back jobs when he cannot. Just like with Trump University, Trump will make promises and then not deliver.
Even worse, Trump would hurt the real winners of our economy, like Apple, Amazon, etc. Trump would be an utter disaster for our economy, and I hope the business community realizes that and works against him.
Here’s a great article:
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/28/trump-would-crush-the-winners-of-the-u-s-economy/