We should create jobs of call center farms and start pitching fake warranties to India. And MSFT support.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple, Other US Tech Firms Sign Letter Protesting India's PC Import Restrictions
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Save the I know geopolitics from my home better than the leaders around the globe for another web site. It gets real old, real fast.
Nothing you say about Europe or even India is factual. It's speculative, at best and works great to instill doubt as that was your intent.
This letter is to gently remind India if it wants to be a global player in the Supply Chain and provide trillions in increased GDP for its nation it must honor its contract laws it signed to retain these major manufacturing hubs.
Yeah... And how much of the top quality items that people like to buy are made by non-profit organizations?
reference
PressWire18 | News - Latest News, Breaking News, Live News Updates
Get the latest breaking news, live updates, and in-depth coverage on politics, business, entertainment, and sports at Presswire18.com. Your trusted source for India and world news, updated 24/7.
presswire18.com
Anyone examining India should look back at what Brazil did many years ago.
I am Indian here, commenting on Macrumors with an iPhone 13, which is assembled in India.
One or two Macrumors users are saying we don’t but make in India Apple products (don’t worry, you have China; we Indians just want to be self-reliant).
Coming to quality standards. Don’t worry about quality standards. The Apple team will look after it.
Even though we make some parts for Boeing, why can’t we make iPhones and other products?
Coming to the topic:
Our government banned importing fully assembled products but not spare parts (it may be implemented in November or they will give some time for it to change; we don’t know until it finally happens). They can import spare parts and assemble them in India.
We have 1.4 billion people, so it may be helpful in coming years, like jobs, and will boost our economy.
But why now? Some may question,
We don’t want to face an out of stock like situation during COVID.
If there is conflict with China.
Lastly, self-reliance
Even though we faced medical API import issues from China during COVID, India is the biggest pharma industry in the world. So now we have started to make APIs in our country itself (not fully, it takes time).
We are the third-largest exporter of the automotive industry, so they want to replicate that. (Automotive parts are locally sourced from private firms in India at around 70–80%.)
Even our defense equipment and jet engines are going to be made in India.
These are a few examples; there are many more, like TV displays, ACs, washing machines, refrigerators, and many more electronics.
In the coming years, our government may implement it for all of them, but time will tell.
Our government's aim is to first assemble in India (made in India), then slowly grasp some experience and technology and make partnerships with private companies and make parts that are made in India.
I am only speaking here about our Indian perspective; it may change for others.
It’s not just our country; every country has its own plans. Like the US is doing with microprocessor fabs.
One or two Macrumors users are saying we don’t but make in India Apple products (don’t worry, you have China; we Indians just want to be self-reliant).
Coming to quality standards. Don’t worry about quality standards. The Apple team will look after it.
Even though we make some parts for Boeing, why can’t we make iPhones and other products?
Coming to the topic:
Our government banned importing fully assembled products but not spare parts (it may be implemented in November or they will give some time for it to change; we don’t know until it finally happens). They can import spare parts and assemble them in India.
We have 1.4 billion people, so it may be helpful in coming years, like jobs, and will boost our economy.
But why now? Some may question,
We don’t want to face an out of stock like situation during COVID.
If there is conflict with China.
Lastly, self-reliance
Even though we faced medical API import issues from China during COVID, India is the biggest pharma industry in the world. So now we have started to make APIs in our country itself (not fully, it takes time).
We are the third-largest exporter of the automotive industry, so they want to replicate that. (Automotive parts are locally sourced from private firms in India at around 70–80%.)
Even our defense equipment and jet engines are going to be made in India.
These are a few examples; there are many more, like TV displays, ACs, washing machines, refrigerators, and many more electronics.
In the coming years, our government may implement it for all of them, but time will tell.
Our government's aim is to first assemble in India (made in India), then slowly grasp some experience and technology and make partnerships with private companies and make parts that are made in India.
I am only speaking here about our Indian perspective; it may change for others.
It’s not just our country; every country has its own plans. Like the US is doing with microprocessor fabs.
Last edited:
And say no to a market twice the US and EU market combined? In your dreams.
They can complain a squirm all they want, but the will comply.
Just look at Apple in China, they were willing to invest in shady business, make their services less secure for the PRC government. They will do anything just to be able to sell. China and India is the 2 biggest market where western companies still have the ability to grow.
The western economies rely on eternal growth. If if a company "stalls out" on growth, they are immediately looked upon as failure. Apple can afford no such thing, and since their market penetration is massive in the western world, they are desperate to grow in China and India.
Of course we have the labor pool. The issue is that government regulation and requirements for workers are so ridiculously expensive, that it's too expensive to hire us. Ask anyone that has ever had a business with even a single full time empolyee. It is very close to impossible to do, without another department of full time employees that soley manages the governmental stuff, to keep everyone legal. The penalties for inadvertently missing even a single, tiny, obscure regulation can be SEVERE. Absurd to the point of insanity. But government doesn't have to be sane. They do what they want without penalty.
This is why giant corporations LOVE endless government regulation. It eliminates the possibility of new companies forming and competing with them.
Unless political turmoil is massive, those companies ain’t gonna give up. Need proof? Just see how Apple bends itself towards CCP.
There are very few people in Europe that would prefer to deal with China than with USA. Even if USA has been a strange "friend/partner" recently.
I buy Hiroshi Kato jeans. Made in LA from premium Japanese denim. Prices are in line with premium jeans ($200+/pair) made overseas. I've been buying their jeans for over a decade. There are several other clothing brands that I buy, all made in LA. These companies are all making price-competitive clothing in the US.
A lot of people throw their hands up and say it's "too expensive to make <fill in the blank> here in the US", but some businesses still manage to do it. I believe where there's a will, there's a way...although I grant that electronics is a particularly complex situation, much more complex than textiles.
Last edited:
They are price competitive for a very small market relative to most jeans. $200 jeans are a specialty item where teh cost of labor is a small part of the final cost, unlike the jeans most people buy.
McIntosh, made in Binghamton, NY is also price competitive, in its market niche, but its price certainly is not in line with most people's budget.
High end luxury items can be made in high cost of labor areas due to labor being a small part of teh total costs to manufacture; but such examples do not support the argument mass market items can therefore be made there.
The economics really aren't that complex, it comes down to how much is labor as a cost of production.
Sure, we could make iPhones in teh EU or US, but no one wants to ay 1.5 to 2x today's price.
Replace "jeans" with "iPhone". Apple's products are also priced at a premium. $200 for a pair of jeans has been pretty standard pricing for a while when it comes to premium jeans. Of course I'm not talking about jeans sold at Target or some place like that, but I'm also not talking about insanely expensive designer jeans either. Lucky Brand, True Religion, Seven for All Mankind, Joe Brand, even Levis all sell jeans in the $200 range.
Again, $200 isn't high end luxury when it comes to jeans. Many designer jeans sell for $500 - $1500 at places like Saks, Neiman Marcus, etc. $200 is premium pricing for sure, but it's not luxury. Many many people spend $200 on a pair of jeans. My point is simply that Kato makes great quality jeans in the US and prices them competitively with other premium jean brands who make their jeans overseas.
That's only one aspect. There's endless regulation and all of the associated costs.
Or Apple could reduce gross margins from their absurd 40+%...
If we assume the average unlocked iPhone today is around $1,000 (USD) and Apple sells around 225 million iPhones per year, are you suggesting that it would cost around $112.5 billion to $225 billion ($500 to $1,000 extra per phone times 225 million phones) more every year to have them made in the U.S. or Europe? That seems way too high.
20 years ago I was buying high quality made in USA Wrangler jeans for $14 (Levi's can burn in hell). Now they're made overseas and cost $35. Can you guess why?
I'm generally in agreement with the points you're making, but this particular one is more complicated and interconnected, in that: It's absolutely true that many consumers, when given the choice between two otherwise-similar items, would pay twice as much based only on the country it was made in.
But the flip side of that is that, as our economy has ended up structured, many consumers can't pay twice as much no matter how much they want, because they simply don't have the income to do so.
That's a corner of a more fundamental structural and ethical question about what it means when the people who produce a consumer good can't actually afford to buy that same consumer good on the wages they're paid, as is true of many factory workers in low-wage countries. Or in this case, the inverse of people who are only able to buy consumer goods because there is a cheap source of labor available elsewhere to produce them.
I'm also not at all sure it's really twice as much; I can think of a number of examples of cheap mass-produced consumer goods that are made in the US and compete directly on price with imports (based I assume on the cost of shipping since they're relatively bulky), and other examples of more expensive consumer goods (more in line with computers) that did not get appreciably cheaper when manufacturing moved from the US to a low-wage country (profit margins for the company usually did increase, but they certainly didn't double).
well of course, but the actual answer is more complex
here's a clue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade
Yes, do you realize why no one else was buying that oil? Other countries sacrificed to not give Putin money, but India?
Part of it would be inflation. I would guess the $14 was probably some sort of store sale price but $14 in 2003 is over $23 in today's dollars. The Wrangler website shows men's jeans available for as little as $25 regular retail (not on sale, not using any promo code, etc.). Some stores even offer Wrangler jeans starting under $20 on sale.
My thoughts, generally speaking...when it comes to "Made in the USA", it's a complex issue, whether we're talking tech, textiles, or anything else. The point is, there are companies that manage to make price-competitive (not necessarily dirt cheap) products in the US. It's possible. Personally I'd rather pay $150-ish (I always wait for one of Kato's 30% off sales) for a pair of jeans made in the USA that are high quality and offer a consistently great fit than something cheaper made overseas that falls apart.
All-Clad manages to make price competitive cookware in the US. Frye Boots has a line of Made in the USA boots that aren't a whole lot more expensive than the ones they make in China. I will absolutely grant that tech is more challenging than textiles or hard goods like pots and pans, however.
Yes, part of it is the "money printing" (also called "tax on the middle class," "inflation," etc.). But why did the factories all move overseas? The answer is the GATT revisions of 94, 99, and 2003.