[joshstrange]

No company can plan based on the tariffs. There is zero guarantee that then next government won't revoked them or that the current one won't flip-flop. Local manufacturing doesn't swing on a 2-4 (or 6 or 8) year timescale. There needs to be consistency.

The company that moves (or starts) manufacturing here today might get run out of business when/if tariffs are repealed and their competitor already has production lines in other countries ready to go. Heck, the factory might not even open before the winds shift.

No one can accurately plan with the uncertainty.

All the big names like Apple are just paying lip service to this. They are throwing, quite literally, pocket change or funds from the government (like CHIPS, which was less ham-fisted than the tariffs IMHO but still not something that's going to change the landscape overnight) at these endeavours to appease the current admin in favor of reduced/removed tariffs on _their_ products and good PR.

If congress wanted to actually do their jobs instead of both them and the judiciary abdicating their responsibility to the executive branch then _maybe_ we'd have a chance in hell. Until then you can look forward to more flip-flopping as the government changes and the smaller companies continuing to be ground under the heel of large corporations who can weather (or bribe) their way out of the tariffs.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Any company should definitely be planning for the inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner.

If not caused by politics, then by demographic crash.

[mywacaday]

I'm curious why you think China will decline or be eliminated, I always thought that China was a reliable as a production/trading partner and that they planned for decades ahead with programs like Belt and Road Initiative unlike western politics that only looks as far as the next election. Very open to correction on this though, thinking about it not sure what formed my opinion on this.

[fhn]

China is not a good trading partner at all. They put up barriers for companies entering their market, mandatory China employee in your company, IP theft, they subsidize and flood the market killing competition, most everything they make is lowest quality possible, lots of fraud even within China.

[shimman]

This just reads as sour grapes when countries don't want to deal with bad trades from Western corporations that mostly focus on extracting local populaces while inflicting as much damage to possible toward local labor groups.

Can't really be shocked when nation states enact laws to protect industries + workers.

[hansonkd]

to be fair, nobody said they were shocked. just that they were a bad trading partner.

[fhn]

sour grapes, sure! Are you going to argue any of the items I've listed? "Western corporations that mostly focus on extracting local populaces while inflicting as much damage to possible toward local labor groups." Western corporations didn't inflict anything. They ask for something to be built, pay, and receive goods. Chinese companies agree on payment, hire people, do the work, and deliver. win-win. Where's the inflicting part? Oh wait, Chinese companies choose to burn coal, dump chemicals, harsh labor, etc but you blame Western corporations. So Western corporations wrote in the contract you must burn coal, you must pay works $1 per day, no bathroom breaks? In fact, I doubt Western corporations deal with local labor groups at all.

You know why China has money now? Because of Western corporations. But fine, you don't want Western corporations, kick them all out. Right now!

[azinman2]

It’s foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is. We’ve seen this with the gulf countries and Strait of Hormuz, China with rare earth metals, Ukraine with grains, etc. Once China goes to take Taiwan all bets are off…

[williamdclt]

Your example are somewhat funny (in a not-so-funny way), the most obvious example for "foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is" is the US, from a european perspective

[azinman2]

Exactly. This is true for everyone.

[b3ing]

We are dependent on H1b workers

[azinman2]

If US educational policy says don’t educate the people because we have H1B, then that’s a total dependence and is foolish. If instead, you welcome smart talented people from all around the world then that’s a winning strategy. It’s up to those host countries to offer more so as to avoid a brain drain.

[jorts]

Their aging population will pose an extremely serious problem in the coming decades.

[dhx]

If demographics are a problem for chipmaking in China, then it's good to compare against key chipmaking countries.

To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1]

  US:     1.62
  Japan:  1.23
  China:  1.02
  ROC:    0.86
  ROK:    0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2]

Alternatively (and perhaps accounting for migration etc), UN 2024 forecasts population differences in these countries between 2024-2050 as:[3]

  US:    +10%
  Japan: -16%
  China:  -8%
  ROC:    -6%
  ROK:   -12%

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...

[2] https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/01/24/IVHGRT...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Chipmaking is not a high labor industry (other than during the building of plants).

China's one big advantage over other work forces is massive amounts of labor that can be directed by central planning. As their labor costs have gone up, labor intensive manufacturing has already started shifting away. When population declines cause labor costs to go even higher, they lose their advantage.

[Forgeties79]

It is impossible to overstate how disastrous the 1CP was and continues to be for China. They will likely never recover from it.

[christina97]

Note that the (total) fertility rate normalizes away the population age distribution, and is often misleading. It does not tell you the actual increase/decrease in population. The US age pyramid is slightly more favorable than the Chinese one, and in particular China is about to face huge societal headwinds due to a large number of old people compared to young working age people.

[cyberax]

One thing missing is that the population growth in the US is mostly reliant on immigration (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/popproj/2023-su...). And our most favoritest political party is working on stopping it.

[actionfromafar]

The Belt and Road initiative is a nice try, but it's not a roaring success. The flaws of democracies are easy to see because of the openness, and whatever goes wrong usually do so over a long time. Dictatorships go wrong in more dramatic ways.

[riffraff]

I think it's also worth noting that China today is not China from twenty years ago. The communist party ran the country but there was some form of "internal quasi democracy" and leadership changes happened, with term limits.

This changed under Xi Jinping and no one knows what the effects will be.

[Danox]

China run by engineers, America run by lawyers and you can still have a career in China as a merchant marine.

[actionfromafar]

Winnie the Pooh is an engineer?

[bluegatty]

China will neither decline nor be eliminated, but there will be hardships from now on and - it would be very bad to have any kind of key reliance on them.

China threatened to pull rare earths from the menu which is how they beat Trump in the trade war, among other things which were not going to be sustainable aka farm stuff.

They want to take Taiwan eventually and that will cause potential confrontation.

So the key to China is that it just can't be a lynchpin for anything.

Major trading partner - yes.

Key partner for anything - no.

The US is already a material player in Chips, outside of Trump's 'knee jerk' and reactionary instinct based on 1980's geopolitics and stupid understanding of trade (aka 'importing = getting ripped off', or 'other people doing similar things = stealing from us') ... it does make sense to have material domestic capabilities.

The only place that can be more or less trusted to not play hard shenanigans is Europe. They will do their own regulatory things, and play rough with exports, but they would not threaten something hard.

Europe has underplayed the value of ASML etc..

China has also flipped from 'Quiet and Bide Time' to the opposite, and are not a nice geoplitical actor in their direct environs like S. China sea, although are relatively 'neutral' on most other things.

Best thing is to a) have 'reliable domestic capability' b) learn to build stuff, if not labour intensive ways c) don't depend on sketchy places for key things d) moslty carrots, have a big stick when needed.

China will never 'play fair' in terms of what we would consider 'fair' - they have their own views of everything - that's fine - but it just means has to be manaaged.

Also China should not have any access to data or popular social media / entertainment etc. TikTok must be locally managed, and strong data sovereignty rules also apply.

More of a 'good fences make good neighbours' think with them.

See former Aussie PM Rudd on 'Strategic Guardrails' - he has a good understanding.

[adityamwagh]

Labour is one part of the equation. China has really well-designed supply chains and economic zones, where getting access to related components just means walking/driving few minutes down the road. They have made huge strides in robotics as well, so the argument for demographic collapse is weak IMHO.

> inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner

I don't think this will happen anytime soon, that companies will need short-term planning.

[KylerAce]

Demographic collapse is a major issue unless agi automates away completely the need for human intellect, drive, and labor on complex tasks. If x% of your population are consumers without producing then that's a net drain on the economy sustained by the 1-x% of the population that is producing. All automation does is lessen the impact of the smaller labor pool

[thewebguyd]

That's already happening for the big players, or at least Apple anyway. A big chunk of iPhones are now made in India, Airpods, iPads, macbook assembly is now largely happening in Vietnam and Thailand.

Granted, I don't think continuing to shift to places with slave wages is a good thing overall, but we need complete factory automation to solve that problem (the problem of wanting cheap goods AND ethical labor). But the major players have seen the writing on the wall ever since covid lockdowns and have been slowly moving out of China since.

[Danox]

India wants to fine Apple $35-38 billion dollars they won’t last.

[pjc50]

Over what timescale? Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

[msabalau]

China has ALREADY transitioned from an "aging society" (7% of the population over 65) to an "aged society" (14% over 65).

There are roughly five working-age adults to support every retiree today. This is going to crater. United Nations projections show that by 2050, that ratio will more than double, climbing past 50%. At that point, China will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retiree. The west grew rich before growing old. China, Vietnam, Brazil are aging as middle income countries.

The one child policy was like doing speed, it temporarily freed up massive amounts of capital and labor. But China's work force peaked over a decade ago. The bill is now due, and all the those "single children" know that they are expected to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents.

Aside from the dubious wisdom of similar interventions, cruelly forcing abortions was a lot easier policy to enforce then it would be to try to shove pro-natalist policies on people increasingly overburdened with caregiving for elders because of earlier interventions.

[osnium123]

Robotics will help China with the burden of supporting an aging population.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula...

[fhn]

they already have in 2016. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/01/china/china-one-child-anniver...

[xienze]

> Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

I don't think they're foolish enough to invite the entire third world into the country to bolster low birth rates like the west does. So that leaves doing it the old fashioned way, which is a slow ship to turn around.

[fhn]

can you explain more on this "demographic crash" because I am not in the loop. Are you talking about population decline which I'm sure will have some effect but elimination?

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Even if they mandated non-stop births from all capable females by law, it still wouldn't catch up to declines.

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula...

Massive immigration (on a scale never seen in human history) would be required. I don't see that happening with one of the most xenophobic cultures on Earth.

This isn't a problem confined to China, they just have the worst numbers. The entire "first world" is facing declines of varying degrees.

This coupled with climate change is why immigration policy is probably the single most important thing for most countries right now.

[ThunderSizzle]

Massive immigration would cause the system to completely collapse as imported people will not respect the local economy, culture, etc. in the same as natural citizens that originally built the nation. That's not xenophobic, just reality. Importing people means importing their culture, which might be incompatible with the state.

It's a reason they began to be called nation-states - states without a nation backing it tended to flop, and nation's without a state tended to slowly (or quickly) be absorbed into the dominant culture.

[bluGill]

That isn't 100% true, maybe 99% though. Anyone paying attention to politics for the last 40 years would have seen that there has always been an undercurrent of people unhappy with imports. This is the most power those people have had, but they have always been there and got significant political attention. There have thus been signs to be aware of, and those signs are things a smart company will take into consideration - they may or may not act, but they should know and consider them.

[spwa4]

But that's the current dollar-based system. Like the gold-based system before it, today countries as a whole have to have long-term balanced trade, as measured in dollars. That's what a great many countries demanded to keep the system fair. If need be, some temporary imbalances can be forgiven by the world bank, but not much.

Outlawing or taxing imports (=tarriffs) of course helps with this.

However, if you look at economic history this always slowly lead to problems that only got resolved by fresh loans (that's what the move to dollar effectively did), hyperinflation or wars.

[specialist]

What's the received wisdom for the USA to (re)build it's own chip supply chain? I dimly recall $500b, 30 years, invest in domestic educational pipeline.

I'm 100% on board with federal industrial policy, public-private partnership, etc. So while I favor the idea of CHIPS act, I have no idea what's realistic.

(And it kinda pisses me off that Intel shunts taxpayer money to their investors. Seems like they don't even want to succeed.)

[znpy]

> No company can plan based on the tariffs. There is zero guarantee that then next government won't revoked them or that the current one won't flip-flop. Local manufacturing doesn't swing on a 2-4 (or 6 or 8) year timescale. There needs to be consistency.

Indeed, but the role of a government is to steer/push private initiative in a certain direction.

Tariffs and stuff are steering private companies towards building stuff in-house (as in: "in the us").

Future initiative inconsistent with this directions will essentially be a sabotage of the US economy.

[joshstrange]

Tariff introduced by congress? Sure. Tariffs introduced by fiat? No.

The fact that a president can create them out of thin air means they can be removed just as easily. I'm not anti-tariff or anti-re-homing-production (where it makes sense) but the _way_ it was done is my problem. Additionally there was no ramp, it was 0->100 immediately. A bill passed by congress to slowly ratchet up tariffs or similar over a period of time would have a much larger impact IMHO. It would give companies the ability to plan instead of just react. The tariffs were enacted in a timespan that made it impossible to move production local before they went into effect. Additionally, tariffs being applied unequally is terrible, it just means whoever has the biggest bribes (solid gold plaque holders anyone?) or can pretend they are moving manufacturing back to the US gets an advantage.

The amount of power held in the executive branch is unacceptable. Just look at how they raided/repurposed the CHIPS act money to force Intel (which I have no real love for) to sell a stake to the government.

Authoritarian governments are bad for business.

[sidereal1]

Additionally, tariffs should be targeted for the specific goods (e.g. CHIPS Act). To do blanket tariffs on entire countries doesn't make sense. Why move manufacturing to the US when importing raw materials also costs more?

[isleyaardvark]

> means they can be removed just as easily.

Some of them were removed. And then put back. Then increased, then decreased, or otherwise changed depending on what Trump was thinking at 3am while making social media posts

[MyHonestOpinon]

Well thought out strategic tariffs are ok. But this is knee jerk tariffs. Even in the best case scenario introduces a lot of uncertainty which freezes investing and decision making in general.

[Hikikomori]

Why would when when they can just bribe the current government to be exempt?

If tariffs were planned, steady increase on a long term we might see a good effect. Like tariffs were used before this trump admin.

[wat10000]

The American electorate seems quite happy to elect people who will sabotage the US economy, so that isn't any reassurance that it won't happen. Tariffs are currently going up and down based on a single man's whims.

[fragmede]

Apple invested 3x the Marshall Plan into China. Imagine if they'd spent that on the US instead.

[throwaway2037]

Did you get that quote from Patrick McGee's book "Apple in China"?

Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China

    > In the book, McGee says that, under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple invested $275 billion in China between 2016 and 2021, to manufacture its products in the country (including building factories and supply chains in China, as well as training Chinese workers). McGee compares this to the Marshall Plan, as this is in excess of other corporate spending and, in real terms, was about twice the monetary value of the Marshall Plan.

I did a quick fact check. The Marshall Plan was originally 13.3B USD, or about 150B USD today.

[elAhmo]

You fail to understand that Apple investing in China is in their best interest - and then returned back to millions of shareholders. If investing in the USA would be a better ROI, there would be no need for any measures like this to force companies somewhere.

People in favour of tariffs make it seem like the best and wealthiest economy in the world is in a bad shape, and it is completely opposite, while failing to address the inequality issue with the wealth distribution.

[throwawaytea]

You're conflating better for apple (and shareholders) with better for the country overall.

[matwood]

The US economy has been one of the best performing economies ever, which has been great for the country overall. Deeper economic ties with other super powers is also a pretty good at keeping the peace. While there are some specific issues, it's hard to argue it hasn't been good for the country overall.

[kipchak]

In terms of the country's overall health I think you could argue we've sold industrial capacity for wealth, and it's too early to say if it was a good trade. Reliance on China for Rare Earth Minerals is commonly referenced, [1] but China is in general a major supplier to the DoW, which negatively hampers our ability to for example credibly deter an invasion of Taiwan. Arguably Post WWII Pax Americana, which relies on industrial capacity, has kept the peace more so than economic interdependence. For example Pre WWI Germany and the UK were each others' largest trading partner, and a conflict was argued to be economically unthinkable. [2]

It also increases the immiseration of those in the areas replaced[3], which is likely a contributor to rising populism and political instability. Most of this malaise is just hidden in places like the Rust Belt.

[1]https://www.csis.org/analysis/rare-earth-export-restrictions...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_of_despair

[smallmancontrov]

Best performing for whom?

If the type of prosperity you want to point to is "stock market go up," we need to talk about who owns the stocks and who doesn't.

[parineum]

It's been good for everyone. Quality of life in the US has risen with GDP.

[Danox]

Not with Trump in power, most of our allies are looking for other places to do business.

[mullingitover]

You make a great case for state capitalism, comrade!

[Zigurd]

I distinctly remember Apple having produced a video showing off an automated assembly line for PCB production for the original Mac. It's not like they didn't try it.

[spwa4]

It's a sad commentary on the modern world that state support (ie. tax avoidance, and ... shall we say "help" in labor relations) matters more than even the best people you can possibly hire working on your manufacturing.

Because that's the difference between China and the US. It's not that the US does nothing, just that China does way more. Some companies are apparently paying negative tax (meaning every products sold the state adds 15% to the price, such deals apparently exist)

But, yeah, less tax means less everything for everyone. Especially less social support and less healthcare. But I guess this is what some of the more constructive people mean when they say taxes are too high. As well as what socialists meant 30 years ago when they said that very high import tariffs are a necessity. They compensate for these huge differences. But at the cost of making any foreign product (ie. "your iPhone") a lot more expensive than it already is.

[flawn]

Then all this 3x amount would have had no ROI, China would have outdid the US comparatively.

[fhn]

Why would they spend that on the US??? This is an investment and they want maximum gain which is definitely NOT in the US.

[joering2]

Easy to imagine - phones would be 1.5x more expensive than they are now, from get go. The cheap electronics (and goods in large part) have been hallmark of "quality of life in USA" for decades; I still get iPhone and Lenovo laptops 40% cheaper than family members living in Europe.

However, it seems that Americans are so tired of growing prices that they are getting used to paying them. Just yesterday there was an article that summarized oil price drop 40% from when the war cooled down, but prize at the pump went down only 12%. The big oil explains this that people will buy gas anyways, so why lowering the price? I think we will see the same happening with electronics - Apple breaking news on $500B factory spending in USA is mostly because they believe Apple owners will keep buying Apple regardless of the price. They may be right... will see.

[lotsofpulp]

>Just yesterday there was an article that summarized oil price drop 40% from when the war cooled down, but prize at the pump went down only 12%. The big oil explains this that people will buy gas anyways, so why lowering the price?

Because the gas station across the street will sell it for less. Because a different refinery will sell it to the gas station for less. Gas prices are the pump and oil prices in the commodities market don’t move in perfect unison. But they do move eventually.

Wild how some ragebait “article” can erase people’s memory of gas prices going down. Not to mention that gas at the pump has taxes/labor applied to it that can also change.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-price...

https://www.macrotrends.net/3591/us-gasoline-prices

[throwaway2037]

    > I still get iPhone and Lenovo laptops 40% cheaper than family members living in Europe.

Isn't this mostly explained by much higher sales tax (VAT) in most European countries? That doesn't seem to have anything to do with off-shoring the manuf'ing of these elctronic devices. That higher tax revenue can be used to fund excellent national healthcare (insurance) programmes, something that the US badly lacks.

[GeekyBear]

Not just VAT.

For example, the EU mandates extended warranty protections that would be an optional purchase in other markets.

[wat10000]

Typical VAT rates are ~20%, so that only accounts for about half the difference.

[selectodude]

Probably not much. The US doesn’t have the capacity for high volume manufacturing. We cost too much.

[Danox]

It can be done. It just takes time. But most of America and Wall Street think in the short term every time. (not all but most).

[joe_mamba]

>Apple invested 3x the Marshall Plan into China.

Apple invested 3x that because they got 30x in return from the savings versus US manufacturing.

>Imagine if they'd spent that on the US instead.

Then iPhones would either have to be 10x more exsolve to keep the same profit margins or Apple would be broke trying to compete with Chinese made goods using US manufacturing.