Administration: Why in the world do supplies need to be chained up?
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Apple Remains in Trump's Crosshairs as Trade Advisor Again Criticizes China Reliance
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Administration: Why in the world do supplies need to be chained up?
In reality, you shouldn’t trust anyone in the US government, some just make the 💩💩💩 seem more believable….
Honestly, I wouldn’t buy any tech made in America.
Of the 38 comments that preceded this, exactly 0 were complaining about a potential increase in cost of Apple products.
But, while we're on the topic, if iPhone manufacturing moved to the US, and the cost of the phone jumped to 2k or more, keep in mind that no other phone manufacturers in the world will be beholden to that mandate. They will all continue to build where it makes financial sense to do so, and Apple will be destroyed.
its tariff loopholes, why manufacture it in America if you can do it in cheaper in other places an think it still American product.
imagine a country without manufacturing, its doomed. theres not future on it.
imagine a country with all manufacturing, and products, sells to other countries.
Great. We now know that was one of the dumbest ideas in the history of the world and we’ve allowed an expansionist dictatorship to amass a large industrial base while gutting our own.
Tim seems like he’s picked sides, now it’s probably time for the US to look into that deal he made with the CCP and decide what sections of U.S. Code may be applicable.
Well Japan in the 1950s wasn't in the best condition to be doing massive manufacturing and exporting. Kinda like most of early '50s Europe.Not to mention where Japan was in tech in that period verses companies much closer to the U.S. for trade.
Yeah that's true... Japan in the 1950s wasn't in great shape. But they were by the 1980s.
Then more and more manufacturing and imports came from overseas in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. We get lots of stuff from outside the United States... even from companies that are based in the United States. It's been happening for literal decades.
So I just think it's funny that now... in 2025... people are suddenly freaking out about things made overseas. It's like they're saying "How dare you manufacture or import products from outside the USA?!?!?"
Really? Where was this outrage 30 years ago? They kinda missed the mark on that one...
🤣
The US currently has near record low unemployment-- 4.1%. As recent history shows, that seems right around the threshold before inflation takes off-- in other words the US is at full employment:
So let's say we want to go through the disruption of reshoring manufacturing-- who's going to do that work? As the US goes through their Industrial Devolution and converts their services and information age labor force first to construction workers to build the factories and then to factory workers where do those people come from? They're going to have to stop doing whatever it is they're doing now so they can man the factory floor.
In other words they're going to have to move from higher productivity, higher paying work to lower productivity lower paying work. After the recession that always attends massive economic disruption and an unwillingness of workers to accept lower nominal wages.
All so your next Mac can read "Designed in China. Assembled in Cupertino."
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No, just no.
Up until this admin, for decades, us govt data was among the most reliable data on the planet. The sheer amount of information, of reports, of stats, of geospatial data, of research, of etc that the US govt produces, that underpin whole *industries*, is incredible. That’s probably the biggest single danger trump’s admin poses to the world, long term: the loss of both the production of the data and the trust in what replaces it.
I thought he is already destroying American economies by introducing his stupid liberation day tariff war already? Cherry on cake, he gets mad when other countries retaliate.
This is a story because Apple is involved. Full stop.
Yeah I think he has got his mission accomplished alright.He might succeed without even trying.
Nah, all people serving trump administration never let themselves educated and never will. Trump wants the entire American population to be uneducated, and purge those that were educated outside of his close circles.
So farmers can’t afford legal workers because visas are expensive, don’t want American workers because they are just too bad. And because of ICE raids illegal workers won’t show up for work.
Not like trump will ever care anyway as he will be able to afford $8000 per meal easily, as well as all of his inner circles. If this continues American agriculture will collapse.
Unfortunately the entire American executive branch (and the only branch with power) is filled with stupid people, and we have to endure their onslaught to America for at least 3 more years. It’s unthinkable.
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Is Tim regretting the bribe … err … “donation” he made to Trump’s personal coffers, I mean, “inauguration fund”?
I mean it was the CEO that had a good attempt at executing Tesla.
Trump has a lot of questions to answer but that not one of the.
Not even if Trump whines and cries and stamps his feet and shakes his tiny little hands in the air?
Why do they care if it's China or Spain, or whatever other country? Apple isn't building here in the US. Get over it.
Yeah. The general goal for a company is to pay as little as possible to make a product, and sell it for as much as possible. It's sort of their entire purpose of existing.
The challenge with the number is you also have to look at people who do not have jobs but are not actively seeking employment and are excluded form the unemployment calculation.
In 2025, the civilian labor force was approximately 170.5 million people. The number not looking for work, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, was 102.5 million people aged 16 or older. Of that about half are over 65 and excluding them makes sense. So that leaves about 50 million uncounted unemployed people; which if included would change the unemployment percentage. There are a number of reasons for not seeking employment for working age people, but if only 15% of the 50 million want jobs but gave up looking for one becasue they can't find one, the unemployment rate would about double.
One thing about buying physical assets in the US is it they are hard to relocate abroad and subject to government action in extreme situations. In te recent World Wars for example, German assets were confiscated.
The ke thing about Trump is at his core, he is a real estate salesman. Every deal has a winner and loser, based on who gets the better end of it, and is willing to say whatever it takes to close a deal and be the 'winner.' There is no win-win, just winners and suckers; and in politics he views his voters as suckers to be used for his own gain.
Again, the most straightforward, albeit indirect, way to determine if we've got slack in the labor force is to look at interest rates. The Fed raises rates when the economy overheats to hold inflation in check (that's why I showed inflation in my earlier graph). When the economy overheats the demand for labor exceeds the ready supply of labor, and employers need to start bidding up wages to find workers. Higher wages means both higher cost of producing goods, and more money available for purchasing goods, so prices go up. Higher costs of goods means employees seek higher wages to maintain their standard of living, so wages go up. And it's that wage-price spiral that drives inflation.
Raising interest rates make it harder for businesses to borrow for expansion, so demand for workers is lower, and inflation is held in check. Interest rates haven't been this high since the effort to bring the DotCom boom under control in the late '90's. Interest rates are higher now than they were when fighting the housing boom.
Maybe a more direct measure of slack will help. Let's assume you don't mean we should pull 16 year olds from school to work in the mills, and leave open the possibility that early retirement might be a sign of prosperity and look at the prime working ages (basically after college to pre-retirement):
Again, we're at a near record level only eclipsed by the dot-com boom. And it's worth thinking about what that means: of all the people ages 25 to 54, only about 16% aren't currently looking for work. The difference between now and the 50's? Women entered the workforce in large numbers. So of that 16%, some are caring for kids or aging parents, some may be permanently or temporarily disabled themselves, some may choose not to work because they don't need to because their spouse supports the family or they're living on inherited wealth. How much would you need to pay those people to get them to leave their kids or their posh lifestyle and polish vision pros?
Are there discouraged workers who have stopped looking? Sure, but it's a small fraction of unemployment, not a multiple of it as you suggest, and I think you'd be hard pressed to build a manufacturing economy on people who can't otherwise find work in a hot and healthy economy:
And the total number of discouraged workers (who want to work but are no longer looking) is half a million, not 50 million:
Specifically looking at manufacturing, there are about 160,000 more unemployed manufacturing workers than there are manufacturing jobs available which, again, is an historically low number:
So-- there's no real pool of workers to rely on here. The labor market is about as tight as its ever been and we still haven't fully brought inflation back under control. Shifting to an industrial economy again is going to be disruptive as we try to build the capital equipment and move workers from jobs they're currently doing to jobs they're not yet trained to do. All so the US can focus on manufacturing rather than the things it has evolved away from manufacturing to specialize in.
Oh, I agree it is a tight market, my point was the U-3 rate is misleading in terms of the pool of workers available for the overall workforce, a better gauge is the U-6 rate which is a broader message of people who would work if they could find jobs as it include discourage as well as under-employed. It is around 7-8%, lower than the long term rate of 10%.
At any rate, the type of labor needed to increase US manufacturing is likely to be highly skilled and unlikely to be a significant percentage of the folks in the U-6 category. Developing the needed killed workforce is likely a generational undertaking, not something that can happen in a few years.
Agreed. Untrained and not located where the factories are located. It took a generation and some painful disruption to move away from an industrial economy, and it will take a generation and some painful disruption to move back to one. Moving away left us with a higher (average) standard of living, moving back to one will almost certainly leave us with a lower (average) standard of living and most likely more severe inequality given how this is all being architected.
Everybody has their favorite index that they feel best represents the emotional truth of unemployment, but none are misleading. They just represent concentric definitions of the same underlying concept-- most economic decisions are based on U3: people who want to work and are looking for work. U6 includes people who aren't looking anymore (so are further from employment) and people who wish they had better jobs (don't we all?). We could also include the pool of people who hate their boss. In the end, it doesn't really make a difference because the relationship between these measures is mostly predictable and they all tell essentially the same story but with offsets:
It's not a fixed difference, but generally a function of the magnitude. When times are uncertain and economic conditions are weak, there are more part timers because businesses need the flexibility in their payroll and there are more discouraged workers because jobs have been harder to find for longer, when times are good businesses start by increasing the hours of the people they've already vetted as part timers, then gamble on the labor market to hire more and the difference between U6 and U3 decreases. Times are good for now, so U6 is historically low and the increment over U3 is also relatively small.
This is U6-U3:
So if you tell me what U3 is, I can pretty much tell you what U6 is. If you tell me whether we're going from expansion to recession or the other way, I can probably tell you which of the two curves we're on:
The point I keep trying to make though is that it's not about how many people are in the pool, however you measure the pool, it's about how small the pool can be before inflation takes off. Whether you say it's a U3 of 4% or a U6 of 7%, the point is that trying to further expand the economy will drive inflation. We're essentially at the "non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment". As we agree though, it won't be a sudden expansion of the economy because the workforce isn't ready for it. A major shift in the skills demanded by the economy won't expand the economy, it will simply increase structural unemployment because the workforce won't fit the jobs that are available.
Of course, that's the balancing act the Fed tries to do, with various levels of success. I agree with your point, and mine was more along the lines of people like to use U3, especially politicians, becasue it is a lower number and makes things sound better than they really are for a lot of people.
As you point out, either way it is how low the pool is that will drive inflation. It will be interesting to see how the impact of "no fire no hire;' will it just be a blip as companies wait out the current economic climate or will it last long enough that the normal wage growth with churn falls behind inflation rates significantly.
Of course, even inflation numbers often lack context, the CPI doesn't take into account greater durability of some of the things in the basket so even as prices use things aren't replaced as often as before.
Of course, that's the beauty of economics, two economists yields three opinions...
And that is the crux of why manufacturing won't return to the US for many products. Apple can build an iPhone in the US, once it's only a chip, screen, battery and backplate that can be assembled and boxed by robots.
Look at FedEx as an example. Their automated package sorting facility in Memphis is basically run by a few technicians with people doing the final loading a sweeping for any packages that fell of the line. Automation enables it to be done in the US and is the future of most manufacturing in the US as well.