• pyre@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    108
    ·
    1 day ago

    you fucking idiot, it’s NEVER EVER EVER coming to the US.

    NEVER.

    a 25% increase in cost is still MUCH more preferable to bringing all of that shit to the US. probably by orders of magnitude. can you even fathom (of course you can’t) what you would need to do to have a 100% American iphone?

    let’s say you’re bringing the iphone manufacturing plant to the US. let’s even assume this move is subsidized so the new factory is going to cost only time.

    the iphone isn’t put together from mere atoms. parts of it need to be manufactured first. there’s the screen, the glass, the aluminum case, several cameras, the battery, the ram, the storage, the CPU, the GPU, the receiver, accelerometer, gyroscope, etc etc… how much of that shit do you think is made in the USA?

    so there’s tariffs an all of that. or to avoid them you need to make several new factories, and have other companies that provide these things also move their factories… and these factories don’t just have people create electronics by hand. you need machines. where do you think those are made? who makes them? so now you need the manufacturers of manufacturing robots to move their factories to the US.

    and all these factories now employ people with much higher salaries.

    all in all, a move like that would halt production for years and when it comes back every iphone would probably cost $47000.

    • Maverick604@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      14 hours ago

      THIS IS WHY TARIFFS NEVER WORK. In the long term tariffs actually encourage manufacturing to leave the country charging tariffs, not move manufacturing there. It’s much cheaper to pay the tariffs once, on the final product, than to pay the tariffs on every part that is required moving back and forth across an “imaginary line” (border in Trump-speak).

      None of Trump’s tariff bolstering hurts Apple at all. They are a global company and can easily adjust around the asinine policies of America for a few years. Americans will get sick of paying a minimum of 25% more for EVERYTHING, while the rest of the world continues on as if nothing happened. Eventually Americans will see that the rest of the world has all the nice things and they’ve become a self imposed Soviet-era block country that has nothing and has to line up for toilet paper, and they’ll be right pissed. Until then, enjoy your delusion. 👏

      • toddestan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        6 hours ago

        The other problem with moving manufacturing due to tariffs is that tariffs can always be changed, whereas moving manufacturing is a longer term investment that can cost millions, if not billions when it comes to things like chip fabs. No one wants to make an investment like that, only to have their investment suddenly become worthless because some politician decided to change how the tariffs work.

        Trump’s idiotic and constant flip-flopping on these tariffs have completely destroyed any chance of them actually accomplishing anything (not that they really had a great chance of that in the first place, but anyway…), because no one is going to move a factory to the US when Trump can and will change his mind based upon a whim or whoever is whispering in his ear that moment.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        13 hours ago

        tariffs could work if you’re not the US. the problem is the US doesn’t make anything.

        for normal countries you could use tariffs to encourage products made inside the country. but for that to haopen:

        1. you need the products to already be manufactured inside the country
        2. you need to have targeted tariffs that apply specifically to those products and not blanket tariffs that would apply to each and every part of product, which would make it infinitely more expensive to manufacture inside the country than outside.

        so for example if your country has a decent production of bananas but people for some reason prefer to buy imported bananas way more than homemade ones, you might have some tariffs on bananas to try and reduce waste.

        for that to be effective, you can’t also have tariffs on soil, farming equipment and whatnot that might be going into your homemade potato production. otherwise you’d have homemade potatoes more expensive then imported ones.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          7 hours ago

          Blind, overall tariffs can’t work anywhere.

          Pretty much every country, including US, has successfully applied targeted tariffs to specific things for specific reasons. Usually you’re protecting an existing industry, but you could even build a supply chain by balancing it with targeted incentives, and bringing them together with a long term strategy to grow that specific segment.

          For example, we used to have a complex strategy for helping legacy car manufacturers transition to new technology. We had incentives to build a market, manufacturing incentives and other assistance, we had targeted loans and guided research to build the technology, obtain the resources, build the infrastructure, we had well targeted tariffs protecting them from specific “predatory” countries, and much more. In a decade or so, our legacy automakers would have transitioned to new technology, with at least similar manufacturing presence in the us and a strong global presence. It was slow, bumbling and inconsistent but it would have worked. Now we’re likely to end up with failing manufacturers unable to compete on the global market, and with their us market shrinking to nothing as they continue to focus on large, inefficient, outdated, polluting technology that can only be sold locally.

        • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          13 hours ago

          Tariffs can also be an effective way of balancing buisness advantages. An example: Germany has quite high standards in its farming sector. This applys to what pesticides you are allowed to use, how much fertiliser you can use, what conditions animals have to live in and so on. Everything that you have to do to comply with these rules costs money, so in order to still make a profit you need to charge quite high prices. If you then compare these with the almost non existent standards of, as example Brazil, you quickly realise, that they are capable of producing goods much cheaper (who could have guessed, that its cheaper if you can just imassively increase your land by land grabbing, giving a shit on everything and using the most efficient, but very cruel, ways to feed and hold your livestock). Due to this, beef that gets imported into Germany from Brazil, thanks to Mercosur without any tariffs, will be magnitudes cheaper than locally made. This kills your local farming sector and also does massive damage to Brazil’s citizen and enviroment (its a massive brainfuck how farming works there). If you want to counteract this you could charge tariffs, so that the consumer starts preferring locally made products, because they are cheaper. This also is an incentive for Brazil to better regulate its farming industry.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      1 day ago

      It’s because Donald can’t envisage the supply chain for anything more complex than a Trump flag or a MAGA hat.

      In his mind, housewives can be knocking iPhones out in Bumfuck, Mississippi.

      • Sunflier@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        22 hours ago

        Excuse me, sir. There is no town in Mississippi called “Bumfuck”. That town is firmly within the boundaries of Iowa.

        Mississippi would never stoop to the level of Iowa in having Bumfuck, Iowa. Mississippi is more elegant in its nomenclature. Thus, if you wish to make a point about a town in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, please respect Mississippi by referring to such a town as Cousin-Hump, Mississippi. Thank you.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 hours ago

          Did you ask around? I’m sure you can go into any biker bar in that state and ask for bumfuck

      • daellat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        If that… I imagine they were white label products so not even those taught him anything

    • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      1 day ago

      Based on the numbers from Purism, it could be a lot more than 25% more expensive to manufacture everything in USA. Purims Librem 5 costs 799 $, while the made-in-America version costs 1999 $. That’s roughly a 2.5x difference. Obviously, economies of scale play a role too but let’s assume that the same factor applies to iPhones too. If so, the fanciest iPhone would cost about 4000 $.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 hours ago

        Ts the entire supply chain that’s the problem. I keep reading stories about Apple pre-buying the entire output of factories for multiple years. For the thousands of parts in a modern phone, how do you expect entire parts industries to spring up overnight on the scale that Apple sells phones? Then entire resource and tooling chains to support those? And we’re making it even more impossible with blindly applying tariffs everywhere so you couldn’t even get established

      • pyre@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        24 hours ago

        too lazy to check but does the “made in America” version have all its parts also made in America? coz i doubt it. if not, each and every part made outside the US would also get tariffed.

        • Pzulu@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          23 hours ago

          No, the US Purism phone is not 100% American.

          They have a different supply chain for it where European manufacturers are used for some parts.

          But some things are only made in China. So I think what was said is Purism source some of the raw materials for these items and have them made to a higher tolerance for reliability.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      1 day ago

      We don’t even have silicon availability. I don’t mean chips or printed boards, I mean processed quarts crushed into powder.

      We would have to start opening strip mines and building massive furnaces and crushers and expanding railways. It’s just not feasible.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 hours ago

        But we can just import some of the things we need as we build up the more valuable end of supply chains. I’m sure they’ve thought of that and there are no tariffs impeding those prerequisites, right? Right?

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          1 day ago

          Rest assured if they fix the rail system or will be to put us in cattle cars on a rather unfun one way trip.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 day ago

          Yeah fr we should, but we haven’t and we probably won’t so it’s silly to expect the manufacturing to pop up out of thin air.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 day ago

        damn it’s been a while since I’ve watched him. it’s just all been current events lately and even though I’m keeping up with the news, i couldn’t watch him because the way his show covers things usually make things much more depressing. I’ve instead been venting here and shit. I’m gonna have to catch up though eventually, it’s still very informative.

        • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 day ago

          Nah I’m with you. I loved him back in the TDS days but over time his show started to get stale, to me

          • pyre@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            24 hours ago

            i don’t think it’s stale just to be clear, bad things are just happening too fast. there’s nothing TDS can do about it really.

            • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              23 hours ago

              Fair, I just stopped liking his show for some reason. I was pretty happy that Jon Stewart came back though

    • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Most of the Iphone is not Chinese, the screens are made by Samsung in Korea, and the chips are from Taiwan. Only the fiddly final assembly is done in China.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      24 hours ago

      And they’d still need to maintain their non-US factories due to the retaliatory tariffs many countries are putting on US products.

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      That McGee book is pretty startling. $55B USD per year for how many years to develop plant and expertise in China over the past decade or two and that’s going to be reversed how exactly?

      I mean, if the US can swing it, good for them, but it’s a bit like asking parents to produce Usain Bolt immediately or pay 25% higher income tax.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 hours ago

        Plus a consistent supportive economic policy. I haven’t read the book to know what’s included in that $55B, but I know it’s been a long term effort and no business will try to build such capability in chaos and personality cults.

        Republicans talk about being best for business is sort of like their “family values”: mostly talk, mostly opposite