• pyre@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    you fucking idiot, it’s NEVER EVER EVER coming to the US.

    NEVER.

    a 25% increase in cost is still MUCH more preferable to bringing all of that shit to the US. probably by orders of magnitude. can you even fathom (of course you can’t) what you would need to do to have a 100% American iphone?

    let’s say you’re bringing the iphone manufacturing plant to the US. let’s even assume this move is subsidized so the new factory is going to cost only time.

    the iphone isn’t put together from mere atoms. parts of it need to be manufactured first. there’s the screen, the glass, the aluminum case, several cameras, the battery, the ram, the storage, the CPU, the GPU, the receiver, accelerometer, gyroscope, etc etc… how much of that shit do you think is made in the USA?

    so there’s tariffs an all of that. or to avoid them you need to make several new factories, and have other companies that provide these things also move their factories… and these factories don’t just have people create electronics by hand. you need machines. where do you think those are made? who makes them? so now you need the manufacturers of manufacturing robots to move their factories to the US.

    and all these factories now employ people with much higher salaries.

    all in all, a move like that would halt production for years and when it comes back every iphone would probably cost $47000.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      We don’t even have silicon availability. I don’t mean chips or printed boards, I mean processed quarts crushed into powder.

      We would have to start opening strip mines and building massive furnaces and crushers and expanding railways. It’s just not feasible.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        But we can just import some of the things we need as we build up the more valuable end of supply chains. I’m sure they’ve thought of that and there are no tariffs impeding those prerequisites, right? Right?

    • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Most of the Iphone is not Chinese, the screens are made by Samsung in Korea, and the chips are from Taiwan. Only the fiddly final assembly is done in China.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        damn it’s been a while since I’ve watched him. it’s just all been current events lately and even though I’m keeping up with the news, i couldn’t watch him because the way his show covers things usually make things much more depressing. I’ve instead been venting here and shit. I’m gonna have to catch up though eventually, it’s still very informative.

        • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Nah I’m with you. I loved him back in the TDS days but over time his show started to get stale, to me

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            i don’t think it’s stale just to be clear, bad things are just happening too fast. there’s nothing TDS can do about it really.

            • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              Fair, I just stopped liking his show for some reason. I was pretty happy that Jon Stewart came back though

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      That McGee book is pretty startling. $55B USD per year for how many years to develop plant and expertise in China over the past decade or two and that’s going to be reversed how exactly?

      I mean, if the US can swing it, good for them, but it’s a bit like asking parents to produce Usain Bolt immediately or pay 25% higher income tax.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Plus a consistent supportive economic policy. I haven’t read the book to know what’s included in that $55B, but I know it’s been a long term effort and no business will try to build such capability in chaos and personality cults.

        Republicans talk about being best for business is sort of like their “family values”: mostly talk, mostly opposite

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      And they’d still need to maintain their non-US factories due to the retaliatory tariffs many countries are putting on US products.