Will a trade war Make American Electronics Manufacturing Great Again (MAEMGA) ?
What are the chances we see Apple and other American electronics companies move production back to the US in the next few years? Could this be achieved with the increasing progress being made in automated assembly?
theverge.com
zero, no, trump is all talk
Wouldn't it make sense for Apple to start diversifying its manufacturing outside of China and SEA regardless of Trump?
Also, Trump might back peddle on tariffs with China but if he holds true with regards to reducing American military presence in Asia it would still make sense to bring more manufacturing stateside.
>if he holds true with regards to reducing American military presence in Asia it would still make sense to bring more manufacturing stateside.
Bringing back manufactoring to the west would make a lot of sense regardless. We can't live on borrowed labor, finance and services forever. Eventually Chinese labor is going to become expensive or, worse, China is going to withdraw it from us to prop up their own industry even more.
We will look for other countries to buy cheap labor from but China is already moving to flank us by colonizing Africa.
Once we don't have any access to manufacturing, services and finance will tank and the west will become the new third world.
>>/reddit/
I don't get it? This seems like a reasonable topic dealing with geopolitical impacts on technology.
kill yourself my man
Apple seems like the most likely company to do this. They have the capital, and assuming they could fully automate the entire assembly process over the next few years, negating the need for a large factory workforce, they could further control their entire pipeline.
On the one hand I would love to see this happen. On the other hand, the day it happens I will immediately run out and purchase an iPhone, MacBook Pro, Apple Watch, iPad Pro 12.9", Apple Pencil, and all the assorted dongles to make them function. I've resisted becoming a Macfag but I would do it for the sake of American manufacturing.
In other news, god I wish IBM hadn't sold the ThinkPad line to Lenovo.
You don't get it, do you? Sup Forums as a whole is their safe space. Anyone who does not support Trump should just leave.
That would make zero sense because in China they can pay their workers pennies for the products they make. They move stuff here or to Europe and they have to pay them the minimum wage and they lose profit. The only reason any company manufacturing in China or SEA would move their operations back to the West is if they found a way to automate at least 90% of the manufacturing process and at most they have a couple guys in the building overseeing the process and flipping one or two switches where needed. They aren't going to have a full assembly line employing hundreds of people or anything in the US. If for some godforsaken reason they did, they'd jack up the price of the iPhone to 4x it's normal cost to cover the losses they'd see from paying their workers.
>do it for the sake of American manufacturing
>the entire process is automated and the American worker sees no profit from it
So you're okay with replacing Chinese laborers with machine laborers as long as the actual building occurs stateside? This is just going to be the same problem in different clothing. We are still going to have huge unemployment among people in the rust belt states because manufacturing now belongs to the machine instead of the asians.
I agree with what you've said but I have three small counterpoints:
1. In general I think it's a bad idea for a country, particularly one that hopes to stay a world power, to move so much of it's manufacturing base offshore. Not saying iPhones are vital to national security but it's a symptom of a larger problem.
2. If enough manufacturing moved back to the US, we could conceivably tax them in return for offering an industrial base and the safety and services that come along with being US based.
3. Even if #2 doesn't happen, at least it will hurt the Chinese, which is a plus for the US.
Automation requires a long chain of machine builders, machine installers, repair techs, programmers etc. It doesn't exist alone.
BTW the US can competitively produce machine tools. Haas is a notable success story. We also have domestic semiconductor fabs.
Bring production here and there will be a lot more jobs than the watchman at some "lights out" production facility.
If they made shit in america they'd have to increase the price of their shit a ton, and also to keep it even affordable they'd have to layoff hundreds of thousands of higher paid workers at corporate, design, and other more desirable branches.
America has jobs, people here are just too stupid to do them. It really is a little like the movie Idiocracy, Rural idiots who can do nothing but the most remedial of tasks have about 5 children each. There is a surplus of stupid people.
Manufacturing by humans wont be coming back. Automation is faster and has more consistent quality plus it's cheaper in the long run.
No it won't.
It will bring a few thousand jobs back to america at a huge over all cost to the consumer to the point that it won't be worth it.
The tire tariff was a perfect example of that.
With no children of our own, we must redouble our efforts to brainwash their kids. They must know Mexico is our future!
>what are rare earth elements
Yeah, it's feasible that tariffs could make using American labor for manufacturing economical again. But there's only a few rare earth metal mines outside of China (and only one inside the US). And if Trump actually goes through with raising tariffs (he won't), China can easily cut off REE access.
>Yeah, it's feasible that tariffs could make using American labor for manufacturing economical again
I see this as a problem, we are artificially making things more expensive so we can create jobs.
The consumer ends up being a loser here.
There is a REE mine in cali that was closed, it can be opened up again.
but so what, china cuts off REE to the US, we open up that mine
we create a few hundred maybe a thousand jobs
all electronics now cost a few bucks more / businesses have a lower margin.
cost to businesses and consumers ends up being measured in hundreds of millions.
>we are artificially making things more expensive so we can create jobs.
This is exactly the problem with all the protectionist proposals. The vast majority of Americans are employed in service-based industries. By bringing manufacturing back to America, you'll improve the lives of at most 10% of Americans, at the cost of the other 90% of Americans not employed in manufacturing.
>cutting off REE access
trump would never steal our memes
It doesn't exist alone buy it operates with far less human input than the human operated assembly line. The humans that do provide input won't be unskilled either. They would have to be those with higher education or certifications that know how to construct or maintain those automated lines. Basically, rust belt workers would still be fucked. Only a handful of smart people would get those jobs and the majority of trailer park folk in Michigan would still be sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. It doesn't fix the probem, just gives it a new coat of paint.
If I owned a manufacturing business I don't even know that manufacturing I'm the states would be a good idea looking beyond the worker plight. If we bring the manufacturing here, then the companies probably have to ship the raw material used to build their product a longer distance and possibly tariffed by their origin country due to the US making manufacturing leave the countries that were being propped by the manufacturing jobs. We'd end up in a trade war
The problem is service-based industries aren't sustainable without manufacturing.
And we can sustain it with manufacturing done overseas.
>electronics cost a few bucks more
If the manufacturing is done in america, where the minimum wage is 7.25 vs china's $1.39 per hour, I would expect electronics prices to go up by more than just a few bucks. It might end up being more economical to import goods from outside the country
Until China decides to undercut you and now you are fucked.
A lot of manufacturing was done in the US until the 80s and 90s life was a bit worse but it's not like nobody could afford anything. The profits from cheap labors went to capitalists they weren't redistributed to consumers.
It's a better bet to wait on that happening than bring stuff stateside and not sell anything at all because people don't want to pay $4000 for a phone or pay half the cost of a new house for a low end car.
Plus when that does happen, that's when we switch to full automation.
The US minimum wage and value of the dollar was lower. Way lower comlared to now. That's why people could afford American made things then. This is a different era and environment entirely.
>>what are rare earth elements
Elements that are uncommon but not actually that rare at all, the problem is extracting them. China is currently the largest supplier of them because they don't care about the byproducts of extraction because their country is already a dump anyway.
No all of their supply chain is in Asia.
Shipping components to the US so it can be assembled by poorly by American (read Mexicans) is pretty retarded.