With what I just paid for my new MBP, you would think it was made in the USA! 
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.
Donald Trump Tells Tim Cook He'll Offer Apple 'Very Large Tax Cut' to Make Products in America
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Exactly. Even an automated line still has a lot of people supporting it. As automakers have moved more and more to automation they are hiring less assemblers, but more skilled trades workers. These plants need plumbers, electricians, robot technicians, engineers, quality control inspectors, etc. No you aren't going to get hundreds of thousands of minimum wage assemblers, but you will get several thousand skilled workers.
This isn't going to employ everyone, but it's a small piece of the whole pie. It's worth investing in.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump said he received phone calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates after winning the presidential election earlier this month.
Donald Trump at The New York Times offices in Manhattan
Trump told Cook it will be a "real achievement" for him when he gets Apple to make its products in the United States, as opposed to countries like China and Vietnam where many of its current manufacturing partners operate.Cook acknowledged the proposition by nondescriptly saying "I understand that," according to Trump.
Trump said he is confident Apple will turn to U.S. manufacturing based on the incentives he plans to offer the iPhone maker, including a "very large tax cut" and "substantial regulation cuts" for corporations.A recent report said Apple asked its Taiwanese manufacturing partner Foxconn to study the possibility of moving iPhone production to the United States, although Foxconn chairman Terry Gou is said to be less enthusiastic about the idea due to inevitably higher production costs compared to China.
While campaigning at Liberty University in Virginia earlier this year, Trump said "we're going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries," while he has also threatened to introduce a 45% tax on products imported from China.
Cook previously said Apple manufactures iPhones in China because the country has put an "enormous focus on manufacturing," while noting the U.S. workforce has a smaller number of individuals with the "vocational kind of skills" needed.Apple also benefits from lower wages in China, where many of its suppliers are located within close proximity of each other. In Asia, Taiwan's TSMC makes A-series chips for iPhones, Japan's Sharp and Japan Display supply iPhone displays, and South Korea's SK Hynix and Japan's Toshiba produce memory chips for the device.
Apple does have a Mac Pro manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, operated by Flextronics, but it is a limited effort given the relatively low production volume of its high-end desktop computer.
Cook was personally a Hillary Clinton supporter, hosting a fundraiser for the Democratic presidential nominee in August on behalf of himself. In a company-wide memo issued following Trump's victory, Cook urged Apple employees to "move forward together" despite "uncertainties ahead."
Apple as a company showed support for both the Democratic and Republican parties during their respective campaigns, but it reportedly withheld support for the 2016 Republican National Convention due to Trump's controversial comments about minorities, women, and immigrants, among other subjects.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Article Link: Donald Trump Tells Tim Cook He'll Offer Apple 'Very Large Tax Cut' to Make Products in America
I'm all up for employees having breaks etc, a 30min break every 4 hours seems reasonable to me, however with unionised wages pushing up costs, Apple and other companies would undoubtedly pass these onto the consumer, causing inflation to rise. So yes, local jobs mean employment, but for how long? As others have said, automation/AI is already here, and with rising wages comes rising prices/inflation.
↑
This just isn't true. I'm an engineer, working in manufacturing all my life. Our companies have many many PEOPLE work in the facilities doing fabrication and assembly work. Also setting up a fully automated assembly line does include many jobs building the line, and also supporting it once in production.
Yes indeed. Steve Jobs made it clear that the biggest challenge in bringing back production was that we simply did not, currently, have the massive number of engineers needed to have an efficient and nimble manufacturing system.
This just isn't true. I'm an engineer, working in manufacturing all my life. Our companies have many many PEOPLE work in the facilities doing fabrication and assembly work. Also setting up a fully automated assembly line does include many jobs building the line, and also supporting it once in production.
Yes indeed. Steve Jobs made it clear that the biggest challenge in bringing back production was that we simply did not, currently, have the massive number of engineers needed to have an efficient and nimble manufacturing system.
There are garments made in the USA. Regulation isn't stopping him. He wants max profits and that's not an excuse.
That will have to be one very generous tax cut, given that a Chinese worker gets paid less per week than an American per hour by some considerable margin. Apple could not afford to compete against Samsung if they were to build in the US.
The UK is on a road to counter this effect, we intend to devalue our currency making imports so expensive that it is cheaper to build everything at home than to ship it in. The only downside is.......... everything will be very expensive, so so expensive.
Wish us luck guys. I suspect the US may be following our example soon.
The UK is on a road to counter this effect, we intend to devalue our currency making imports so expensive that it is cheaper to build everything at home than to ship it in. The only downside is.......... everything will be very expensive, so so expensive.
Wish us luck guys. I suspect the US may be following our example soon.
God bless Trump
Time for America to be great again
Time for America to be great again
Oh yeah... Because history is riddled with examples of a prosperous company leading a country into hyperinflation merely by opening a manufacturing plant.
Nope.
http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?fromYear=1994&toYear=2016
Here's a chart for you.
Why do you keep posting BS misleading charts?
No one's saying to do NOTHING. What they're saying is we shouldn't focus our efforts on bad solutions. Most of these jobs are never coming back. There will be no market for them. Whether it's manufacturing or coal plants or something else, nobody likes to hear that their profession is becoming obsolete. But instead of trying to fill false promises and string these people along, we should look into retraining and helping these people transition to other fields.
I'm amazed people actually believe this.
America was never greater than it is right now.
I don't think you understand economics. The high prices IF they were built in the US comes from regulations, unionized labor (another form of regulation), and perverse corporate taxes. Thus, these costs are passed on to the consumer in the form of high prices. If people stopped repeating soundbites and objectively looked at basic free market economics, then it's pretty simple.
Not to mention shipping most of the components to the U.S. in order to be assembled. Other than the glass, not sure much else is built in the U.S.
Substantially all component suppliers should be nearby the final assembly factory.
It will be beyond the control of Apple or Foxconn.
This would have to be an industrial exodus, but that what eastern Asian countries did in the past, and many people believe the movement cannot be reversed.
I am very interested to see how this will happen, and I think it will happen.
It will be beyond the control of Apple or Foxconn.
This would have to be an industrial exodus, but that what eastern Asian countries did in the past, and many people believe the movement cannot be reversed.
I am very interested to see how this will happen, and I think it will happen.
Sadly, the simple numbers just don't add up. Let's say Apple is currently paying about 25% tax. I'd assume that is tax on PROFIT, not on REVENUE (which is around 5x higher), but let's say it's tax on revenue. That would mean that even if you said Apple pays no tax at all, they could only cover 25% of the current product price in added labor costs. But my impression is total cost would become 2-3 times higher with American labor ($50/day vs $1/day), so there simply isn't enough tax to pay American salaries - instead the price of Apple products would go up. Did I mention that a 2016 Macbook Pro maxed out with AppleCare and tax already topped $5,000 ?
What are these fields? More social workers?
I don't think anyone here thinks putting everyone on an assembly line is the answer to putting people back to work. All most of are saying is that this is something that should be factored into our future workforce. I believe it was Tim Cook who stated it is hard to manufacture in the US because we don't have a workforce that is properly trained for modern manufacturing. Why is this the case? We need to be educating students for a modern economy.
If Apple spends billions in building a new state of the art manufacturing plant I don't see how that hurts anything. It will take a lot of people to build it. It will take a lot of engineers, waste specialists, and skilled trades workers to keep it going. It will provide a lot of local tax impact not to mention creating wealth by producing a product.
Look this is not the answer to everything and won't put everyone to work, but build a few dozen of these plants in the US and it will have a positive impact. There is no one big thing that will fix everything, but we need to invest in a lot of small things to make a big impact. Don't just dismiss ideas before we investigate them fully.
It will have a huge carbon footprint due to the logistics of shipping components half way around the world to assemble, thus increasing global warming, and flooding the major metropolitan cities on the coasts. This will in turn create massive new employment in home building, etc. So it's win win.
Employment numbers are also misleading since they can include government jobs.
Last edited: