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Donald Trump Tells Tim Cook He'll Offer Apple 'Very Large Tax Cut' to Make Products in America
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Sounds good... Lets just hope Trump doesn't start scrapping regulations with out looking closely at them. Capitalism with out regulation is inherent to fail....
I remember reading a study that said it would be nearly impossible to move iPhone manufacture to the US. Ignore for the time being the fact that the supply chain is all in Asia, and that Chinese/Taiwanese works earn significantly less than their peers in the US. Just the number of people required to manufacture the iPhone makes it a non-starter. There are only a handful of cities in the US that have a working population large enough to staff one Foxconn plant and that would be the entire working population employed at one factory!
Can you envision tens of thousands of Americans relocating to a plant in the arse end of nowhere (cheap land) to work making iPhones?
On automation, I believe Apple actively don't pursue an automated production line for the iPhone. Wasn't the original iPhone supposed to have a plastic screen and Steve Jobs changed his mind at the last minute? If they had then had to go and reprogram and test all the robots on the production line to work with the new material it would have set the launch back many months, but humans are nearly instantaneously adaptable...
Tim Cook: "I'll consider that when you start manufacturing your entire clothing line in the United States."
"Hello? Donald? Are you there...?"
"Hello? Donald? Are you there...?"
Actually all businesses will be getting tax cuts if he implements the policy specified on his website.
This is awesome.MAGA - Make Apple Great Again?
LOL. The only ones he wants to send back are the illegals. You know, the ones that are here illegally. Those that followed proper procedure are not going anywhere.
Lower taxes for everyone huh?...... ok. But who is going to pay for the tax cuts?
I hear you but with the corporate tax cut to 15% and lowering unemployment I think those things would be great. Even if Apples margins went down they would be ahead of he game with the money they save on tax. They would be able to reinvest it (hopefully in the US).
There's a big step you missed in all that, the double Irish Dutch sandwich. When an iPhone gets sold in France, that French subsidiary then pays licencing fees to Apple's other subsidiary in Ireland. Those fees are for patented tech that was invented in USA. It is also the US courts that protect those patents. But USA gets no taxes from that.
The US is not set up with factories like Foxconn and the like in China. We live in a global economy - anyone who thinks this can be done easily is just ignorant. People think iPhones are expensive now? What do you think happens when you are now paying $15/hour, have a multitude of OSHA regulations, unions etc, etc etc to deal with? Trump is just spewing more ******** (nothing out of his mouth is ever true) to try to make it seem like he is doing something. All he is doing is making himself look stupid.
I'd argue that the human race, without regulation, is "inherent to fail". Just look at China right now, in the pursuit of profit, and with minimal regulation they are destroying their land. It is increasingly apparent to me that humans are inherently greedy and can't be trusted to moderate themselves in the interests of the greater good. Look at the banks, big companies tax affairs etc... they work within the limit of the law to maximise profit, even if they know what they are doing is 'morally repugnant'.
Take overdraft charges for instance, it wasn't illegal for banks to reshuffle the posting order of transactions from largest to smallest and to take debits before they applied credits, so they did to maximise the fees they could collect. It was only when regulators said "you can't do that anymore" that they all stopped and claimed they were doing so as a benefit to their customers...
Sorry, not a chance given the current level of education and technical skills in the US workforce.
Except, the US tax code says that if you do this today, you deduct what you paid from what you owe.
So with the US at 35%, and lets assume Ireland is 15% (where the subsidiary for the EU is usually located), then you owe 20% when you bring the money into the US, not 35%. Not quite the same as double taxing.
The changes to the nominal tax rates would accomplish similar things, but also have more knock on effects for small business rather than strictly benefitting the big guys. Although in the US, I'm concerned how a nominal tax rate may do nothing about Puerto Rico tax loopholes and still leave us with avenues for companies to reduce the taxes they owe in the US. But only the ones big enough to setup the physical presence to do so.
Right now, I agree with others that actually helping small businesses be competitive in the face of the advantages large companies have available to them will have a bigger impact than a change like you suggest that does zero for local businesses that do the majority of hiring in the US.
Right, because only immigrants can and would do those jobs.
They may not want to work at the factory if they are asked to shave their mustache.
Are you still upset over the election result? Sure sounds like it. If Clinton had won and said she wanted to work at bringing back some manufacturing jobs I doubt you'd have the same attitude.
Yes there would be some downsides to this and mainly would effect Apple corporate profit. There is no way they are going to be charging $2500 per phone so net profit per unit might take a hit, however there are things the U.S. Government could help to bring production costs down. The more people working, paying taxes and not drawing govt assistance the better for our economy.
Now automation will play a big part in this, but that doesn't mean you still would not be hiring a lot of people to keep everything running and doing all the jobs that can't be automated.
Now if your square in the corner of corporate profit and think Walmart jobs are good enough for those blue collar folks then you wouldn't like this idea. I'm not fooled into thinking Apple is bringing it all back, but if Trump is successful at getting a few of these tech giants to even produce 25% of their products in the USA that would be a positive thing. I don't really like the guy either, but I do support this idea.
I am proud of Trump. I am going to raise my children so that they can grow up to work in a factory assembling iPhones. Let's make America great again guys /s
5% isn't that disgraceful really (if this percentage hasn't changed)
It depends on whether it's effective and honestly (since I do not really trust him) what the end game is (how it may affect his businesses).
It's not a bad thing to bring jobs here as long as we actually have the skilled workers to do them. And that it's not a smokescreen to show how a few very public companies execute on it while many others benefit themselves without creating jobs. If that makes sense.
Except 2 things. The Chinese are starting to want higher wages. They want to be able to afford what they make and realize that they need more money to do that. Not going to happen overnight but their wages are ticking up.
And all we need is another spike in oil prices + increasing wages to make China uncompetitive. When oil is $140/bbl again it's a lot cheaper to pay workers a little more and not have to ship your stuff across the Pacific and then across the country.
While I work in the "Service sector", we need manufacturing jobs here in America. The 2 are intertwined and we need to get people back to making stuff again. Once people make stuff they have extra money and can buy stuff, thus perpetuating the cycle.
And yes we could live without China. It would take time as we'd have to increase manufacturing and figure out how to do without some of their precious metas but I think it could be done.
Hopefully as a businessman first (and politician second) Trump understands this. Sure can't be any worse than the last 8 years.
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The tax subsidy is a tax cut (to all businesses). 15% vs 35% will let companies reinvest and hire new employees. Apple has created over 2 million US jobs since 2007 (according to a MacRumors article from 2 days ago). Do you know how many small business this is equal to? And that's just Apple ...