If Apple manufactured their products in the US, the iPhone would probably cost $999 with a 2-year contract and the iPad would probably cost $1599 for the 16GB model.
When you have to pay someone $12 an hour to work an assembly line and pay for benefits and payroll taxes, that raises costs a lot to a country where you can pay 75 cents per hour and benefits like health insurance cost $5 a month rather than $500.
A 25-page document isn't necessary and the law would be dumb. All that it takes is for someone to take a basic economics course.
Americans who complain about jobs leaving overseas need to realize that when they go shopping they need to put their money where their mouth is. Everyone pays lip service to "made in the usa" but when they look at the price tags in the store they buy made in china!
The thing to watch here is if the quality improves when production is done in Brazil. If the production quality is the same or better, that's good news for consumers.
Recently I have purchased two truck toys for my kid, one was a made in China Tonka truck $50, the other was a Bruder truck $50 made in Germany, about same size trucks, same functionality, and the Bruder was made out of nice soft plastics where Tonka was made from hard cheap plastics, plus if you would even look at both of the toys you would see just how much better and how much more detail the Bruder had over Tonka. Anyway, one would think that a childs toys is a low skill labor job and that it wouldn't make any sense building it in a highly developed nation yet somehow its doable in Germany. I see more made in EU toys in European Union countries than I see made in USA toys in USA (which is almost zero). This is just an example to show that simply US companies are more greedy and they just want more bottom line profit, nothing else. They don't care about local communities, their towns, basically their own consumer base, because the people who make it are also the people who buy it. But this kind of mentality is good for short term investment, what happens if your entire middle class disappears (its been happening for the past 25 years)? Who will buy the overpriced Nike or Apple products? I could see an advantage of cheaper labor in labor intensive niche products but those products are expensive to begin with, so if a person would be able to afford a $2000 Coach made in China bag, then they could easily afford a $2250 made in USA bag. Again, labor cost difference in mass production items is minimal.
Another issue is outsourcing of ALL the jobs, these days you have doctors from Russia reading the CT scans or X Rays for American practices and does a US patient see a decrease in medical costs??? NOPE You have paralegals outsourced all over the world, programmers/IT, lawyers, pretty much any industry can be outsourced these days except for services. And again, the savings in labor are not passed towards the consumer, its more about increasing profits for select few.
Do you really think that iPhone would cost $999 if it were made in USA? It would be maybe $50-75 more expensive than it is now and all the money would stay within the country making the country stronger and local economies strong and stable. And last but not least, US government allows all of this, its funny how for over 50 years they were battling USSR and communism yet since the 1970s they helped one of the most oppressive communist countries which is China become a world power. On one hand USA is trying to teach "democracy" in the Middle East and yet they do business with one of the largest oppressive countries in the world. Anyway, I'll end my rant, its not like the world will change tomorrow.
