Why Apple is Rushing to Move Production Out of China

This is why you should never let these corporations preach at you about morality because they don't have the morals themselves

First time I've ever heard someone say apple's prices for their products are "reasonably low" as Apple's prices have always seemed unreasonably high considering the pieces that makeup the insides of Apple products have never been top shelf.

I used to work in Supply Chain Mgmt in the electronics industry. We started moving a lot of production to Vietnam 10 years ago, but much of the components still end up sourced from China. It's pretty much impossible to be fully free of China in the electronic industry, but it's slowly progressing.

Well, it’s like I’ve told my colleagues. When employees have had enough of unfair treatment, they will go elsewhere & seek something better at the expense of a company. Why should they care for a company when it’s that company that doesn’t care for them. A company only works when employees are happy & content with their lifestyle, especially the backbone of it.

You gotta love Ricky Gervais for pointing this out at the Golden Globes to their faces. 👏👏👏

Hey, as long as a country is lucrative, companies don't care about the crimes committed by the one who controls it. As long as it makes money.

I hope they increase their production here in India. We are in dire need of more jobs.

This is why the US needs to introduce a law that would prevent US companies ( Headquartered in the US ) from outsourcing work to countries that have labor violations / children workers.

To be fair, it's more about keeping corporate profits high and not keeping prices down for consumers. If their production costs went up 5, 10 or 15% Apple would actually pass the cost on to the consumer because they refuse to lose profit. Just look at how they treat app creators. The take a 30% cut for simply allowing an app on their store after forcing them to follow 100s of rules and doing absolutely no work themselves. This behavior is how Apple became the first trillion dollar company.

With all the billions they got, they could built there factories here pay Americans great wages help our economy and still have billions left. Greed ! that's what's it's all about.

So the real problem is the shareholders of the companies demanding that profits keep increasing year after year. This prevents companies from adjusting their profit margins and paying workers more 😒

Nice summary about the topic and the details. You're right about how the COVID and geopolitical situations has shown distributing manufacturing to numerous places, due to unpredictable global supply chains, which means some more expensive complications. Seems like Vietnam often does a good job in terms of production, dedication, and improving labor conditions (I've visited there many times and seen some factories there, including during an unannounced inspection), but I hadn't considered the small size of their population. I hadn't thought of India and its political structure influencing the location of factories (or not). You know, Mexico (despite Zeihan's explanations) is close by to us and might be the right place to go, despite not ideal for this type of manufacturing at this moment: Developing this large countries capabilities, Mexico, would be ideal for the USA in many ways from political to economic. // Maybe Apple could accept lower profits and just produce phones in ways that are more respectable in an atmosphere with a government and society that aligns more with their customers' values. Afterall, China has Hawei, which was doing well for Chinese and other places that don't share those values. // on another point, do we really need new iPhones every year? Maybe people should spend less on fancy phones or buy them less often.

This whole international scramble, because Apple threw out the idea of "better pay and working conditions" as unacceptable.

China has an even bigger problem with worker shortages: demographics driven by the one-child policy. The generational cohort that drove their economic rise is aging out of the workforce. They will have fewer young workers as time goes on. Other countries fill that deficit with immigration, which China does not allow. This will severely limit their capacity for growth.

Any other location change will lose Apple money. Apple executives would rather strangle their children rather than lose a single dollar.

What makes the iPhone so good? The tears of factory workers making the devices

I wonder if iPhone city is heading to a future Chinese version of the American Rust-belt, Foxconn has been buying old factories in that region in the US recently as well.

Keeping your gadgets and gizmos as long as you can before replacing is the solution to this problem.

Gee, I wonder if a law requiring that all goods sold in the U.S. be manufactured in a way that conforms with U.S. environmental, safety, and labor standards would make any difference..? 🤔 Otherwise, labor laws will continue to do absolutely nothing but cause the loss of American jobs.

There is a common assumption that Chinese workforce is cheap. That has no longer been true for quite some time. Chinese wages has been rising for many years and it is currently a lot higher than most south East Asian countries. Most companies stayed in China not for the low cost, but surprisingly for the high skills, efficiency, and comprehensive equipments.