The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has served to remind many of the old adage “never keep all of your eggs in one basket.” COVID-19 is expediting Apple assemblers’ move out of China that has been underway since the President Trump began deploying U.S. import tariffs on China in an effort to remake trade deals with the country.
Wistron Corp., one of Apple’s manufacturing partners, said this week half its capacity could reside outside China within a year. The declaration underscored how the Asian assemblers that keep the world supplied with iPhones and other gadgets are shifting to a higher gear after the coronavirus showed the folly of staking everything on one country. The move in production out of China has been underway since the trade war between Washington and Beijing reached its zenith last year. Now, Covid-19 is expediting that. Decisions by companies like Wistron and other Apple Inc. partners including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Inventec Corp. and Pegatron Corp., could re-shape tech supply chains…
More than any other assembler, Hon Hai encapsulated how the coronavirus brought the world’s No. 2 economy to a standstill. Better known as Foxconn, it augurs a potential shift in a global production paradigm that’s governed the electronics industry well over three decades. The company also has facilities in India, where it began churning out iPhones last year, and Vietnam. “Trade, the virus, all these things will make the world very different in the next decade,” Alex Yang, the company’s investors relations chief, told investors in a recent call…
“It’s a wake-up call,” Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told Bloomberg Television last month. “China was a given, it was the perfect infrastructure for us to source and buy from there, and to sell. Now of course we have to reconsider scenarios, how to deal with China in the future.”
MacDailyNews Take: Given the government in China – one very obvious, constantly flashing warning signal – spreading risk obviously should have happened sooner, but, hey, better late than never! At least we can thank COVID-19 for something.