PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Little Joe on July 07, 2025, 08:20:08 AM
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The administration is trying to coerce Tim Cook into moving operations out of China and back to the US. That is a good goal for the US but it would be catastrophic to Apple. There is no way they can make an Iphone at a profit in the US with the current labor and wage situation, among other things, like OSHA and EPA regs. But that kind of technology is at the top of the list for National Security. It's absurd that we get the high tech stuff we need to defend ourselves from the same people we need to defend ourselves from. That's like buying oil from Terrorists that use that money to terrorize us.
I'd love to see it, but I'm not sure if Americans would be willing to pay the price. Either Iphones would cost $3k (an estimate I read recently) or the government might have to subsidize the move.
The only way I can see this working is to eliminate minimum wage laws, reduce OSHA, environmental and other regulations that would have other repercussions and still give some huge tax incentives.
I don't have an answer. What do you think?
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Yea, we need slave labor from overseas to make sure we can afford our toys………
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The perfect example of the extremely awkward situation we've gotten ourselves into with globalism, and that is only ONE single item. Think about this: The same catch 22 applies to virtually EVERYTHING you own, buy or consume. Every single thing. Even if you think it was "Made in the USA" the raw materials and componants were sourced elsewhere and if not, the machinery to mine or make them here were themselves made elsewhere.
The plus side of this is that it brought costs down for consumers, hence allowed lower classes access to "luxury" items, and lifted everyone to a higher standard of living. The other plus side is lifting smaller foreign nations out of poverty by allowing them to participate in a global market by selling for example, the one resource they have, and buying all the modern widgets made elsewhere. This by the way, is the basic free market absolutist libertarian argument. It's better for everybody!
But that argument ignores the downside, which is now you become dependent on nations that are your ideological enemies, allowing exactly what you allude to (spyware on your phone) or simply the danger of them just cutting you off.
There are many other downsides, for example, the fragmentation of skillsets. Instead of one person (or factory) knowing every step of how to build an item, you have outsourced the various components to spectialized parties, each of whom can do one part very well, but there is noone who knows how to do all of it.
And it ignores basic human nature which is territorial and tends toward hostility between groups.
The thing holding it all together is the U.S. guarantee of shipping lanes. WE did that, and in the process hollowed out our manufacturing base and our middle and working classes. So we have a huge, disastrous unintended consequence.
Trump is trying to address this, but reversing this whole thing is like trying to turn around the Titanic. It can only happen slowly and carefully. Try to do it too fast you get exactly what you allude to: Sudden inaccessibly high prices and probably backlash to your party, opening the door for the communists to take over.
This must be done very delicately, and even then most people don't have enough vision to understand what's happening or why it's necessary. I don't have a lot of hope that it can happen without a whole lot of pain, or political crisis in our country.
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I thought Apple was moving production/manufacturing back to the US. At least some of the Apple silicon processors are made in the US (Arizona). Some are made in Taiwan (more of an ally than mainland china).
This has been going on for a few years - it's not an initiative of the Trump administration. Some of it is in response to the (gross over-)reacation to covid.
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Yea, we need slave labor from overseas to make sure we can afford our toys………
The green font wasn't necessary. This is the situation we have gotten ourselves into. The question is what do we do about it?
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I thought Apple was moving production/manufacturing back to the US.
They are. At a glacial pace.
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The plus side of this is that it brought costs down for consumers, hence allowed lower classes access to "luxury" items, and lifted everyone to a higher standard of living.
But the other side of that coin is that when everyone is lifted to a higher standard of living, there will still be a certain percentage that is on the bottom side of that standard and liberals will feel like that group must be subsidized too.
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They are. At a glacial pace.
I just read this:
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple
CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/07/trump-navarro-apple-tim-cook-china.html
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But the other side of that coin is that when everyone is lifted to a higher standard of living, there will still be a certain percentage that is on the bottom side of that standard and liberals will feel like that group must be subsidized too.
Paradoxically, the more you lift the poor, the more the left chastise you for the differential between the poor and the rich.
Correlary: The more equality you give a once oppressed minority, the more the left screams you're oppressing them. In fact, you are now expected to let them steamroll over you and take power and become the new oppressor, all while screaming about what a bigot you are. That's not me saying that: Thomas Sowell did!