On my phone, will poast text in a bit

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842098)

That contest is over the more valuable production steps like research, design and the manufacture of more sophisticated components where the U.S. is dominant but China is closing the gap. Mr. Trump has correctly identified Chinese practices—such as forcing U.S. companies to transfer technology to Chinese competitors—as a threat to that dominance. But an all-out trade war could end up doing more long-run harm than good.

Apple’s iPhone is one of the most successful consumer products in history, and one of the most globalized. Its camera is Japanese, its memory chips South Korean, its power management chip British, its wireless circuits Taiwanese, its user-interface processor Dutch and the radio-frequency transceiver American, according to a study of the value added in smartphones by Jason Dedrick of Syracuse University and Kenneth Kraemer of the University of California at Irvine.

The factory workers who assemble iPhones in China contribute just 1% of the finished product’s value. Apple’s shareholders and employees, who are predominantly American, capture 42%.

Where the Smartphone Money Is

China contributes little of the value in Samsung and Apple phones but a lot of Huawei’s.

Source of value added

China*

100

%

U.S.*

South Korea*

Taiwan

Japan

Cost of

materials**

75

Distribution†

IP licenses††

50

Unidentified

Parent

company

25

0

Samsung

Galaxy S7

Apple

iPhone 7

Huawei

P9

*Excluding parent company contribution

**Principally raw materials

†Accrues to retailer or carrier in country where phone is sold

††Largest beneficiaries are Alcatel-Lucent (French), Ericsson (Swedish), Nokia (Finnish), InterDigital (U.S.), Qualcomm (U.S.)

Note: Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Sources: Jason Dedrick, Syracuse University; Kenneth Kraemer, University of California at Irvine

Suppose Apple decided that all the phones it sells in the U.S. would be assembled here. Mr. Dedrick estimates each phone requires two hours of assembly. For 60 million phones, that means 120 million hours of work, or roughly 60,000 jobs.

Hiring that many workers is no picnic: In 2013 Motorola Mobility set out to make its Moto X phone in the U.S. but struggled to find enough American workers according to Willy Shih, an expert in manufacturing at Harvard Business School who is also a director of Flex Inc., the contract manufacturer that Motorola used. In 2014 Motorola decided to outsource production. Apple has encountered similar problems assembling its Mac Pro computer in Texas.

Assuming Apple could find 60,000 workers, it would have to hire many away from other employers given how low unemployment currently is. The benefit of the wages they earn would be offset by the higher prices other Americans pay for their phones.

How much would that add to the price of a phone? Mr. Dedrick says about $30; Mr. Shih thinks it would be more because of the cost of shipping individual components to the U.S. Still, such an increase would hardly kill sales of iPhones, now priced at $600 to $1,100. The bigger cost of U.S. assembly, says Mr. Dedrick, would be the inability to quickly add hundreds of thousands of workers when new phones are launched, which is only possible in Asia. Apple can charge premium prices in part because it introduces superior features before its competitors do.

“If they are coming to market late and their products cost more…Apple is going to lose market share,” says Mr. Dedrick.

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The economics of the iPhone’s competitors are quite similar: Assembly represents only 1% of the value of Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy S9 and just 4% for Huawei Technologies Co.’s P9, according to Mr. Dedrick and Mr. Kraemer. For all three phones, the most valuable parts of the supply chain occur elsewhere: in the parent company’s design and research; the manufacturing of key components such as microprocessors, memory and communications chips, and cameras; and the intellectual property embedded in key patents. These jobs aren’t as numerous but they pay more and have more spinoff benefits for the rest of the economy in the form of innovation, expertise and profits reinvested in new products and markets.

This is where the real stakes in the current trade row lie. It’s too late for the U.S. to bring back all of the supply chain. The time to act would have been in the early 1980s, before Western manufacturers began outsourcing the assembly of personal computers and many components to east Asia. Taiwan and South Korea exploited those supplier relationships to acquire know-how for manufacturing increasingly sophisticated products.

In the 2000s China copied that playbook, starting with low-end assembly, then attracting related suppliers by promising preferential access to its domestic market. China now boasts four of the world’s six largest smartphone manufacturers. Huawei now sources many high-value components such as chips and processors internally or locally, and thus captures almost as much of the value of its phones as Apple does, although its phones sell for far less.

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The real question is whether even more of the value in the technology supply chain will flee the U.S. for China.

Mr. Trump accuses China of using forced technology transfer, subsidies and nontariff barriers to help its companies supplant foreign competitors at home and abroad. The U.S. has a lot of leverage in this fight given China’s continued dependence on U.S. technology and the presence of companies like Apple to hone its capabilities. But the fight has risks: forcing Apple to shoulder costs its competitors don’t hurts its own dominance, and China has multiple ways to punish American companies, as it did recently by blocking Qualcomm Inc.’s takeover of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors NV on antitrust grounds.

American companies broadly back Mr. Trump’s goals and are prepared to suffer some short-term pain to achieve them, so long as success is measured not simply in how many jobs they create in the U.S. now, but in the quality of the jobs they create both now and in the future.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842111)

link to full article

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842112)

"The factory workers who assemble iPhones in China contribute just 1% of the finished product’s value. Apple’s shareholders and employees, who are predominantly American, capture 42%."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842123)

robots also can't do clothing

the whole everything can be done by robots idea is bullshit

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843345)

This seems patently false

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842154)

we do need to invest a fuckton in getting a bigger leg up on China, but I’m not sure kneecapping Apple (full of shitlibs though it might be) is helpful

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36842194)

Stockholders and executives reap all the benefits of cheaper overseas production

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843365)

HINT: child labor

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843353)

Why don't you add them and be sure?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843156)

thank you ronnie for everything that you did!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843195)

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/23/why-apple-inc-is-so-profitable.aspx

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843373)

HINT: yes 13% returns!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4081472&forum_id=2#36843376)