“Apple Inc’s biggest iPhone assembler, Foxconn, is considering setting up a factory in Vietnam to mitigate any impact of an ongoing trade war between the United States and China, Vietnamese state media reported,” Reuters reports.
“The report comes after several executives interviewed by Reuters last week singled out Vietnam and neighboring Thailand as preferred destinations should they need to shelter operations from the trade war, braving hurdles such a lack of skilled labor and inadequate infrastructure,” Reuters reports. “‘Foxconn Group and the Hanoi People’s Committee are working together to open an iPhone manufacturing facility in Vietnam to negate the impacts of the U.S.-China trade war,’ the Vietnam Investment Review reported on Monday.”
Reuters reports, “In trade talks on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed not to introduce any tariffs for 90 days as negotiations continue.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Another move in the pre-deal chess game, this time by China. And a weak one, at that, as the logistics of starting up an iPhone factory, not to mention finding an ample workforce, are massive.
Why not India?
Corporate welfare. India doesn’t pay as much for corporations to relocate. India thinks their English skills make the country attracted enough for tech investment. For software and customer service, sometimes that might work out all right. When it comes to manufacturing, however, Apple doesn’t care what in what language a drone worker bee slaps together iPhones. They just want them fast & cheap.
That is why American corporations are never truly as patriotic as their marketing. They have always raced to the global bottom on mfg wages, while jersetting corporate executives somehow justify wasting billions to have their offices in the world’s most expensive cities. Or like Apple spend billions on a poor function donut headquarters that is undersized already for the staff its increasingly bloated bureaucracy has become. Irony….
Smart move Apple, Vietnam is great spot, both underdogs at one point that successfully stood up to those who would seek to oppress them. And they won, and survived.
Good move. Chinese wages are creeping up while I understand that Vietnamese have good work ethics. Many Japanese mfrs, notably big auto OEMs and component suppliers pulled out of China/Korea and moved to Vietnam and some other ASEAN countries a long time ago.
The limitations of the US administrations blundering foreign policy are revealed. Unable to lead the world with major fair trade reforms via multilateral diplomacy, the corrupt DC swamp creatures’ threats might result in an Asian supplier to hop over to the next lowest wage Asian country that offers deep water ports and massive corporate welfare.
Good on ya Trump. Did you get your North Korean condo development off the ground yet?
I thought that Foxconn was going to make them here. That’s what Trump said, so it must be true.
The less labour content, the easier to bring the fab/ass’y to the US. Easier assembling (modular etc) and mass production (for robotic assembling) have to be engineered into the product design. The less glue mess or soldering might be better. Apple and/or Foxconn must have sufficient technical capability to do this. I too wish to see these electronics gadgets assembled in the US. If someone has succeeded to do so, it is going to be phenomenal.