[varjag]

You can legislate IP as much as you want if all your engineering jobs have followed production.

Not sure what the analogy with planes is all about, it's exactly the thing they are both manufactured and designed in the same country.

[zelon88]

The analogy with planes is that planes pay the bills. Spaceships pay the bills. Coffee cups and Wal-Mart items won't pay the bills.

Building iPhones doesn't pay China's bills (they're citizenry is impoverished) so why would we want to compete with them for jobs to build iPhones? Let them keep doing it! We keep building spaceships and airplanes.

The analogy is.... We're currently building high-tech, high value items where the engineering matters. The manufacturing matters. China buys airplanes from the USA because no commercial airport (including the ones in China) would allow a Chinese-made plane to land there.

Our country isn't held afloat by manufacturing jobs at Apple, or Samsung, or Fisher Price, or Vtech, or Daewoo. It's held together by General Dynamics. General Electric. Boeing. Rolls-Royce. Airbus. Big spenders who contractually must source the highest possible quality out of a domestic supply chain irrespective of price. These are $30-50/hr jobs that put food on America's table.

Making iPhones is a $10/hr job with marginal quality. Throw a handful of iPhones and see what sticks. We're competing with China for jobs they're willing to do for $2/hr jobs. For what?

[charliesome]

> China buys airplanes from the USA because no commercial airport (including the ones in China) would allow a Chinese-made plane to land there.

This is a ridiculous assertion to make when there are indeed Chinese planes landing at Chinese airports.

It's true that the majority of airplanes Chinese airlines currently operate are manufactured outside of China, but this is not the reason.