[mokash]

Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have anything to sell, anywhere! I’m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they’re quickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.

[Teever]

Can I ask you why you have this particular hope?

Is it because you are a user of apple products and hope that you will continue to do so in the future because you are dependent on them?

Is it because you believe that apple is a good company and you hope for the best for them?

Why should we hope for the best for a company that has made hundreds of billions off of offshoring jobs to an authoritarian country with little regard for investing in manufacturing in America?

The way I see it is that if China decides to squeeze Apple by restricting their production it will be a fair comeuppance for a company that has seen fit to extract billions in wealth from developers through their app store and has sought to turn their commodity hardware into status symbols to extract even more wealth from middle class people who want to feel like they're more than middle class.

If the executives at Apple had any foresight and any interest beyond self interest they would have encouraged domestic production a decade or more ago. Instead we have a situation where people are crying for poor Apple, a company who that has more money than god and who could have used that to create their own supply chain domestically which would have had tremendous benefits for America and the American people.

Instead they have chose to consort and ultimately enable an authoritarian country into a situation where they now pose a legitimate threat both militarily and culturally to America, the albeit flawed but last best hope for freedom in the world.

Think different indeed.

[awinder]

Yeah, this is a super-weird anti-Apple flex. There’s a lot of problems with it, mostly that damn near every tech product is manufactured in China, or using majority components manufactured in China, etc. But here’s the biggest problem I have. China deliberately wanted to focus on this type of manufacturing for decades. You don’t just decide you’re going to manufacture iPhones and then poof in 6 months you’re running world-class operations. It would take untold time and dollars to develop these capabilities in a human workforce in America. What you’re all hopped up about, has literally no chance of happening.

I too have qualms with what is going on in China, but like everything that happens in this life, I’m flipping petrified of how much damage some reactionary american screed might do.

[ppf]

China accepts child labour, and runs ethnic concentration camps. Have you forgotten that standing up for what is right can result in negative personal consequences? Or have Americans gotten so used to consequence-free "protesting" of whatever is the current bogeyman in their safe country? This might be the most spineless and gutless comment I have seen on HN. If you ever wonder how people accept large-scale atrocities, here is the answer. They don't want any disruption to their supply of affordable iPhones.

[awinder]

If this is the most spineless and gutless comment you’ve read on hackernews, then welcome to hackernews and I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the first comment you read here. Jesus, what an overreaction.

[ppf]

Fine, but don't pretend you care about human rights in any context.

[awinder]

Get help. Seriously. I don’t know why you’re keying in on me for making a comment about how Apple can’t just magically relocate millions of jobs to the US as being some kind of bad person. I’m purposefully not discussing the moral side of this, I’m rebutting the parents claim that Apple should just throw money at this and fix it. They can’t.

[14]

You do realize how much money Apple makes right? They absolutely have the money to run these capabilities in America. They also have enough money they could do it in a timely manner. What they know would happen is the cost to actually manufacture an iPhone would shoot through the roof and they would be left either making less profit to sell the phone at the same price point it always has been, or they will have to dramatically reduce shareholder return. They don't want to do either of those things obviously because right now new iPhone cost around 1000$ and it is probably close to what the market will bare. So their only option would be reduce shareholder return and I think that is the only thing stopping them from moving home. Simply put they would not make as much profit.

[pwinnski]

Is your argument that their manufacturing costs would increase by less than 30%? Or that you expect Apple to fold as a company?

You state "they absolutely have the money to run these capabilities in America." Apple's published margin on hardware is 30%, so if manufacturing in America increases costs by 30%, Apple no longer makes a profit selling hardware. If manufacturing increases costs by more than 30%, Apple starts losing money selling hardware.

Big numbers are big because Apple is selling many, many, many phones. That also means that adding to the cost of manufacturing by even a small amount per unit immediately chews up a lot of those outrageous profits.

[tooltalk]

Apple buys iPhones wholesale from CMs (contract manufacturer) like Foxconn, Pegatron, etc for only $250-$350 and sells them for around $799-$1000 retail. The cost of labor (ie, final assembly; aka, manufacturing) in iPhone BOM, often born by CM's, is around $10-$12 per device.

[lovetocode]

This is spot on. I really enjoyed the point you made how this is karma for robbing App Store developers. I am not sure I understand the cultural threat though. Militarily from a cyber perspective they are certainly a threat.

[tonyedgecombe]

It's pointless expecting corporations do make those sort of sacrifices, it would be economic suicide.

[greggman2]

Didn't pressure work for companies in South Africa? Didn't pressure work for catching dolphins in fish nets? Note I have no idea if those were effective. I was too young to know. I just remember lots of talk about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/united-states-cons...

[TeMPOraL]

It's only economic suicide because people don't expect those "sacrifices". The market doesn't value ethics on its own, it has to be made to value it - by things like public expectations, customer pressure, or regulations.

[vharuck]

If a company chooses to heavily invest in a nation with limited freedoms, the suicide started when the decision was made. Not when the consequences start to hurt.

[throwaway2048]

Yep, the idea that companies should be given a free pass to act with utter amorality because they put themselves in a situation where they are obliged to do so is ridiculous.

[LilBytes]

I very much doubt it would be suicide, it'd be an economic inconvenience. But even that cause hell to freeze over for their stock holders even if the loss was only momentary.

Publicly held companies will rarely choose the good of the public over the good of their stockholders unless given fiscal incentives through tax increases or tax decreases.

Unless they become as wealthy as Bill Gates and make a non-profit with their enormous wealth.

[lotsofpulp]

Given that I don’t see ANY large companies that don’t manufacture or assemble in China, especially electronics, I don’t see how one can claim it would not be economic suicide.

Consumers have chosen their priorities, and they’re only able/willing to spend a little bit extra for a better product. They’re not going to spend that much more for more expensive labor too.

[mattacular]

Interesting that you attempt lay some blame for the situation on consumers who have "chosen their priorities"

That is absurd. Consumers have absolutely no choice in the matter other than the most unpractical "avoid using modern electronics"

[lotsofpulp]

They did at some point in the past. Large portions of the US manufacturing and textile sector disappeared because people opted for the cheaper imported items. I don’t see any reason to assume they would be willing to pay more for labor now either.

[eastendguy]

Samsung announced a few weeks ago to move all its (phone) manufacturing outside China:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-china/samsun...

[tooltalk]

Samsung is already gone. Samsung had foresight and is well diversified. The company started packing up and moving to Vietnam at their peak in China back in 2013. Most of their smartphones now come from Vietnam (and Samsung's Vietnam operation alone accounts for 1/4 of all export from Vietnam).

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, and it’s going to Thailand and Vietnam and India, where the cost of inputs is cheapest (including dealing with government, the costs of which are going up in China).

[foogazi]

>a company that has seen fit to extract billions in wealth from developers through their app store

This doesn’t make sense - App Store is a voluntary program no one is forced to develop apps for iPhone, or even android

[m10i]

You didn't mention taxes. Doesn't Apple offshore their earnings as well?

[csommers]

Why would you NOT want to have that hope? Being reliant upon China for anything is a huge no-no.

[eternalban]

This is a fair rant all around, but in my opinion your righteous anger is misplaced.

Apple, as other nominally American "multi-national" corporations, was and remains subject to government policy and plans.

Which institutions, centers of power, and influential individuals determined that the de-industrialization of United States was such a hot idea and pushed that to its extremes in the 90s?

Apple simply operated in the stated and promoted policy regime. They are not alone.

(Also cross your fingers regarding your "last hopes". Patriot Act. Secret courts. Permanent state of "national emergency" with attendant curtailment of our Natural Rights, "Surveillance Capitalism", ...)

[goatinaboat]

Which institutions, centers of power, and influential individuals determined that the de-industrialization of United States was such a hot idea and pushed that to its extremes in the 90s?

It’s worth remembering that in the 90s, Francis Fukuyama was the hottest philosopher around and there was a general belief that economic liberalisation would inevitably lead a country towards Western style democracy and all that entailed. No one, certainly no one as prominent as Fukuyama ever predicted the opposite would in fact occur.

Not that this excuses Apple or anyone else. Once it became apparent they should have acted urgently. Because it meant that all their basic assumptions about how the world works need to be re-evaluated.

[aiscapehumanity]

Lol people like baudrilllard, gilles, and guattari had better 21st century predictions then fukuyama. Fukuyama is like the starwars of 90s philosophy, mainstream tripe.

[goatinaboat]

Sure but I didn’t assert he was the greatest philosopher, only the most popular, the star of the show.

He has since renounced his 90s work, to be fair.

[FabHK]

And arguably his 90s work has been caricatured and mischaracterised, too.

[mistermann]

Ross Perot had a thing or two to say about the economic wisdom of offshoring America's manufacturing.

[pseudalopex]

Would Fukuyama have been as prominent if he predicted the opposite?

[eternalban]

Fukuyama simply wrote a book. It strains credulity to think a single book moved the entire Western establishment to radically alter the status quo.

[goatinaboat]

The End Of History wasn’t just a book, it was the whole fin-de-siecle zeitgeist. I guess you had to be there. He was the Anna Kournikova of philosophy back then.

[eternalban]

I was there.

p.s.: https://www.newsbud.com/2018/02/09/the-rockefellers-and-roth...

(No, this news is not "fit to print" in The New York Times.)

[chrischen]

Chinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a political game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have serious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some policies (that don’t affect you) don’t agree with your world view.

Even though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign power prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the justification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war, Vietnam, and mass incarceration.

Yes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of sorting out their own political issues. And if not, they’ll reap the consequences without you having to do it form them.

If you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics from afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing their own politics. I understand they don't have directly elections or a multi-party system, but that does not mean there is not opinion sharing in policy decisions, or intra-party elections. In a representative form of government direct-elections are not really a thing anyways.

If you truly support democracy, the last thing you would do is to try to influence the policies of another people. That would be robbing them of their self-determinacy, even if it is to prevent them from robbing themselves of it.

[ksec]

That is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the point of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.

>they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty

And they did, by first and foremost down to joining WTO.

Once this government starts ( and has already done so ) influence or force Rest of the world to cooperate or kowtowing to their own self interest, which fundamentally undermines everyone else basic value and principles, then it is no longer their own policy and issues.

And that is about as civilised as I can put it.

[chrischen]

> That is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the point of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.

Yes because this is a Mainland issue. So only Mainland opinions are legitimate. They enact their policies with their best interests in mind, however misguided it may be because a foreigner can only enact policies with their own interests in mind, however well-guided they may be. A white person probably shouldn’t go into a black community to tell them how they should run things for their best interests.

The issue isn’t that they are doing something right or wrong—all governments will enact policies that are disagreeable... the US included (in the case of Edward Snowden). The issue is that to the Chinese they will never take the protests of foreigners seriously because foreigners will have their own interests in mind, not to mention are generally poorly educated about Chinese policy decisions in general.

Trying to influence policy from afar is simply a form of taxation without representation. A foreigner really should have no say in the policy decisions of afar because 1) they do not have to suffer the consequences of the policies, 2) they cannot understand the experiences leading to such policy decisions and 3) as a result of 1 and 2 they will always have their own interests in mind rather than those or their constituents. Imagine a product manager in the US trying to manage a product built by a team of engineers in China for the Chinese market. He’ll sure fail because he will have no grasp pf the product in practice being used over there, and for that reason anyone that detached from something should not be trying to exert influence for their own interests.

A poor inner city black family may have a whole different set of daily problems than a rich white suburban family. Imagine if the white family admonishes the black family because their kids are failing school or dealing drugs. In absolute terms dealing drugs is wrong, illegal, and failing school may be a sign of bad parenting, but in reality the needs and priorities of the black family are on a completely different level from the white family.

Disenfranchising the Chineses’ right to self-govern because of your limited frame of reference that they are doing it wrong is myopic. Waging political and ideological war against them because they do things differently is the true crime. You should criticize their bad policies by pointing out why they are bad, not by disenfranchising and belittling the voice of the rest of the population.

[toxik]

You talk a big talk about right and wrong, but it’s clear to everyone that the CCP is intent on not honoring the agreement that HK be allowed to elect their own leader.

That’s what this is about: tyranny versus freedom. It’s disingenuous and frankly racist to compare this struggle to what a poor family lives through, and then conflating that with their skin color. I’m sure there are legitimate concerns with regards to the justice for minorities, but your argument is that that’s only the concern of black people? No. Your argument is a very typical CCP stance that the West best keep out of their dealings. No, I say, let’s stand for freedom and democracy when it is truly being attacked.

[frequentnapper]

If the Chinese govt were to be destabilized then maybe those in the internment camps will have a better chance at survival and life in general. What are your thoughts on that?

Are the lives of the Han more valuable than other ethnicities?

[tuyhtoolots]

Or it could get worse. The American Civil Rights movement was during a time of economic prosperity. When times are lean, there is more competition and people generally have less empathy.

[goatinaboat]

they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty

This is the same argument that “they made the trains run on time”.

[toxik]

> That would be robbing them of their self-determinacy

So like what the CCP is doing to Hongkong? In spite of having agreed not to?

[mattigames]

> If you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics from afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing their own politics

Giving them money buying their products _is_ influencing, preferring them to hire manufacturers there _is_ influencing, influencing is just not just the opinions you dislike people giving on the internet about the situation there, in reality such comments are near nothing compared to the influence actual money and American (and world-wide) business exert politically by doing business there.

> for the most part they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty

The genocide or religious groups[0] is a price far far superior than anything any sensible human being would pay to get their country out of poverty, btw are you counting the people living in cages[1] a 'out of poverty'? And are you counting those who died living in extremely toxic conditions near factories as 'out of poverty'?

[0] http://theconversation.com/despite-chinas-denials-its-treatm...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/zlfjiOG.jpg

[2] https://imgur.com/gallery/7CFjIgK

[seanmcdirmid]

> Even though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty.

They did that by stop screwing up the economy and let capitalism do its things from the 80s on. Giving them a win for a policy of “stop meddling” I guess makes sense, but only from a perverse point of view. The best decisions the CPC made were to stop doing things.

[jjeaff]

It's mind boggling to me that Apple has become so big, and a huge majority of their revenue is still coming from outsourced products.

[toasterlovin]

Why? Until Trump was elected, which none of the elite class in the US thought was remotely possible, a massive trade war with China was on nobody’s radar.

[imjasonmiller]

I thought Apple was in the process of moving some of its production to India?

[rudiv]

That's only for products being sold in India, to avoid import taxes. And of course, it's only products from more than a couple generations ago, e.g. the iPhone SE, the 6S. I think the newest phone they're planning to manufacture in India is the 8.

[wingspar]

As of Dec 2018, they were reported to begin building ‘high end’ phones in India this year. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-exclusive-idU...

Granted, it’s small production numbers, but have to start somewhere.

[Uhuhreally]

can't believe Apple can't do its own manufacturing in USA or Europe

[ekianjo]

That goes both ways. If Apple don't make iPhones in China then chinese workers in these factories have nothing to work on, because nothing sells like Apple products. Apple is just being weak.

[psv1]

Strongly authoritarian regimes can (and already do) easily give up a lot of the well being and livelihood of their citizens. It's not even remotely close to a symmetric dependency, market forces simply don't apply the same way to China as they apply to Apple or to the US in general. Which is another reason why getting into an already pointless trade war is such a bad idea.

[raverbashing]

This is a bit of a lesson of what happens when your focus on the price tag only.

Sure, I want my products to be cheap, but there might be some hidden costs that will eventually show up at a very inconvenient time.

Sure, Apple can do CKD assembly of their products everywhere, the manufacture of custom parts is the tricky part.

[summerlight]

Yeah, this is true. Apple is now desperately trying to reduce the dependency on China, but this will take at least several years which is more than enough to damage its reputation. Building supply chain that spans over an entire country is still a non-trivial problem even though Samsung did most of the hard works for Apple.

And worse, even this is still a very optimistic projection given that it might be impossible at all. Samsung was lucky in that they were still producing majority of their semiconductors in South Korea, of course, which makes them still important enough to China. I don't know if Apple holds any thing comparable as a negotiation card.