Trump’s answer, however, may simply be demanding that Apple brings production home.
At present only a small number of high-end Mac computers are made in America. The president would see it as a vindication of his policies if the stamp on the back of the iPhone said: “Designed by Apple in California, made in America.”
Zetter says there is no chance of that. “There is no single location in the Americas that can amass a workforce of 800,000-plus like Foxconn can in China,” he says. “Apple currently has extremely limiting options beyond exemptions and negotiations.”
This is gonna be like watching a slow motion car crash.
The inevitable conclusion of 50 years of neoliberalism running your country is that you end up with a generation of capitalists and political leaders that can’t manufacture anything, don’t understand how manufacturing works, have no concept of the kind of infrastructure necessary to manufacture things, and need a panel of experts to politely explain that not only does their country not have the personnel or facilities to manufacture things but that the social mechanisms for educating that workforce and building those facilities have atrophied from non-use to the point of collapse.
And this is ignoring the fact that production lines have become so used to literal millions-strong workforces being centralized in massive Asian cities (that the west can’t build because of fifty million other reasons all along the same lines of atrophied levers of power and total contradiction with major profit centers, like mass transit or basic urban planning) that even if we did manage to overcome all those problems we’d still be radically changing what existing supply chains look like and essentially reinventing the core business model of dozens of major industries at once while they’re still running at typical capacity, something that capitalists famously love doing.
There’s a whole lot of finding out about to happen.
Frankly true.
Tim Cook sold Apple’s principles for safety and now he has neither.
No one could have seen this coming. Especially not the people that warned this is exactly what would happen.
No one except the top fascist wins in fascism. Literally anyone who has read history can tell you that.
Famously even fascists don’t win forever.
One bad Apple spoils the bunch.
Have they tried giving Trump ANOTHER Million dollars? Maybe a BILLION dollars? I Don’t Know the Current Price for our Non Corrupt Administration!
It’s supposed to trickle down anyway. They’ll get it back. An investment in the future as it were.
What could have protected Apple other than a reasonable trade policy or a specific exemption? I don’t think Trump would have done either for anyone.
Unless they swear fealty and pay him
No, I don’t think that would have worked. Many did and it didn’t work. These tariffs are Trump’s pet project - he’s not going to compromise on them easily.
Haven’t paid enough and haven’t kneeled hard enough yet.
Too bad for poor Tim Apple
Maybe they didn’t kneel hard enough?
Or Tim didn’t say thank you for being allowed to join the inauguration.
the rotten apple effect
