| > that never amounted to anything They did amount to something. Those announcements were part of Apple's initiative to build/assemble certain Mac Pros in Texas. The idea is to do it on a high-margin, low-volume product so that any hiccups can be absorbed in the accounting and aren't as impactful to millions of customers. Hiccups like a dearth of US suppliers of subcomponents. If a North American customer purchases a Mac Pro its final assembly occurs in Austin, Texas. According to local media and government reports Apple has spent over a billion dollars in Austin and directly employed about 10,000 new permanent workers so far. If you count local suppliers, the total is higher. You can see some of the billion dollars here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/dHy52bEoWizDC5qz5 You can click on "See more dates" and select 2020 to see that in two years that site went from "empty lot" to "hundreds of thousands of square feet and thousands of workers". The Flextronics facility about a mile-and-a-half to the south is another chunk of cash. Additionally, many, MANY, components from audio codecs to SoC cores to sheets of glass used in Apple products are made in the US and exported for integration into products that are assembled overseas. If you think 5 years from announcement to construction is a long time, I've been working about that long on a committee to build a tiny 4-bay fire station. It isn't about money, we have the money and infinite money wouldn't really change anything. It's about permits, contractor availability, and subsystem/subcomponent lead times. The diesel fume extraction system installers had a year-long backlog of work alone. If you're waiting for the iPhone to be built in the US, you're going to be waiting for a long time, perhaps an infinitely long time. Other, higher-margin lower-volume, products? That's more likely. I'm more familiar than most with how difficult it is to build things in the US, because I build satellites for a living and fire stations as a civic duty. It's hard. |
As opposed to actually eliminating the source of the hiccups.
The Japanese auto manufacturers moved their high-volume, low-margin assembly to the US and succeeded. They started by importing nearly every component and then steadily replaced them with locally-built components.
If Apple was serious, that’s what they would have done. You know, like how they did it in India. Like how they did it in Malaysia. Like how they did it in Vietnam.
Apple’s not serious about US-based manufacturing until proven otherwise. Gold statues don’t prove anything.