Kuo: Apple Better Off Taking 25% Tariff Hit Than Move iPhone Production to US

[JPack]

You'll have no argument from me that German luxury autos are better in nearly every way than American autos. My whole point about the lack of US autos in the EU, is when European consumers look to buy a their next car, most US brands aren't even an option because of the restrictions the EU imposes on US cars.

Do you really think anyone in Europe says, “I wish my next car were an American car”?
Or Japanese say “I really want a Cadillac or Ford, but darn those barriers!”
Or Chinese say, “I really want a Tesla instead of a BYD, Xpeng, or Xiaomi.”

Ask the fundamental questions first.

In China, consumers were buying iPhones at record rates even when there was a 16% VAT on imported goods. Today, you couldn’t find anyone wanting to buy even with a $350 discount and 13% VAT because of competition.

 

[H2SO4]

You'll have no argument from me that German luxury autos are better in nearly every way than American autos. My whole point about the lack of US autos in the EU, is when European consumers look to buy a their next car, most US brands aren't even an option because of the restrictions the EU imposes on US cars.

Not even close.
A lot of American cars and trucks are huge that alone takes them off my list even before the EU pose any restriction. There are other things as well.

EDIT: What's funniest about my post ands shows bias on the point of the downvoter is that my post is about MY experience and feelings, but the response: disagree.
I saw one of those big trucks on the A420 the other day and it was being overtaken by an X5. The size difference was so obvious as to be ridiculous.

 

[AeroEd]

Trump just needs to accept some stuff isn't going to be built here. The idea of it sounds great until you get into the details. It's just not happening.

Then we are making China and Indias militaries great again. Sounds logical…oh wait

 

[tcphoto1]

The clown show will continue for another 3.732 years then we can go about our business and lives in a normal manner after an adult takes office. He is delusional if he thinks that our largest Corporations are going to build new factories, staff and train those employees then manufacture their products in the US. It simply is not profitable and consumers will not buy them at inflated prices, we will simply look for a comparable quality and economic price. Trump simply doesn't care, he's grifted Billions for himself, his family and friends, so he doesn't care about paying more because he's got deep pockets.

 

[visualseed]

Easier to take the initial tariff hit and let the courts and congress sort it out. His time in office is limited. The hit of moving production state-side would drag on for decades. In 18 months or less the entire politics of this may be an entirely different reality with entirely new players.

 

[AeroEd]

Have you ever worked on a factory production line? I have and it really, really, sucks.

Have you ever worked fast food? Who in the blue h ever said jobs were supposed to not suck ?? Lololol

 

[AeroEd]

Iphones arent built by robots. Tim Cook himself said there aren’t enough skilled labor in America who know how to work with the fine tooling needed to manufacture electronics. People like you is why Trump can push his nonsense

So what skills are needed to assemble an iPhone in an assembly line?

 

[AeroEd]

Ok...lets walk though this tariff as if its reality right now. Ok....You got an average education. High School GED, maybe a few semesters of college or some trade school but no College degree because you cant afford tuition and dont want to spend the rest of your life in student loan debt and your town is now opening up an Apple Factory nearby and they are looking for help.

You figure, hey, Apple...huge brand name, major coporations with massive profits, lets work for them building iphones, why not! You use them all the time, might as well build them as well.

You go in and apply, and they take you with barely an interview and you find out your making minimum wadge...maybe even less now that a law has passed that companies can pay you what THEY want to pay you and what they think is fair...because...well you dont need alot of money anyways...your basically cattle to them.

But for arguments sake, lets say the jobs a full time job, but at minimum wadge and no promise of a raise, advancement, health care, benifits, hell you dont even get an employee discount. Your lucky if you get bathroom breaks and a lunch break.

But hey its a job right..so lets do it. Your working 8 to 12 hours a day depending on whos the manager that day, sitting down (if your lucky cause seats cost money) screwing tiny screws into the housings of iphones all day non stop. We are talking hundreds if not a thousand phones per day in the most repetitive job you can think of.

But dont screw up once, you're fired and someone else will take your place and there goes your minimum wadge paycheck that you cant really live off of anyways.

After rent and ulitities and bills, you barely got enough money for basics like food and soap and clothing and forget assistance from the goverement. Foodstamps? Na, that cost them money. Healthcare...please...better find your ass a better job despite there being none. Your on your own. You wana work hard, save up, buy a house, start a family of your own? Yeah right...keep dreaming, but do it on your own time.

Hell you cant even afford to buy the phone your spending 8-12 days your building. Your still using an iphone from 4-5 years ago cause no one can afford a new one.

Now, one day your tired, working hard and you have an acident...you screw right into the palm of your hand with an electric screw driver...and your out of work for a while...thats time spent healing not paid, and you need to be paid because you cant afford the healthcare you need to get your hand back functioning to use the electric screw driver.

But it doesnt matter anyway. Apple is laying off people left and right, because its got too many iphones in a warehouse it cant sell because even sold at cost to make them with no profit, they still cost too much for most people so they cant even give them away.

Sales are tanking, jobs are being lost cause apple is not going to pay you to make phones it cant sell even at cost, and now the company is bleeding out money left and right just to keep the lights on, it cant sell anything because no one can afford to buy what they are making...and everyone ends up out on their ass broke because some orange idiot thought in his mentally warped head this would be a good idea and a bunch of selfish coward politians were too scared to stand up to him and say maybe "Hey this isnt going to work the way you want it too"

But hey does it matter? they got paid. they got their slice of the pie....screw the rest of ya.

Thats America now.

Thank you for summing up capootalism and exactly why it doesn’t function. Capootalism is the problem here, and it’s making the majority of Americans poorer by the hour. We are following capitalism off a cliff and everybody is distracted by the orange 🤡

 

[Dark_Omen]

Nobody cares what Kuo thinks. Stick to rumors instead of opinions.

 

[Dark_Omen]

If Apple announced they were going to do that, within seconds, Trump would say the tariff is 50%. Then 100%. Then 1000%.

We are dealing with a madman- who on top of being a narcissist sociopath, is an absolute moron. He is far too stupid and egotistical to ever admit, or even know how stupid he actually is.

Of course, all of this could be stopped by Congress, but we have a Republican majority that is petrified of this absolutely insane person.

Overall, this only ends two ways: 1) The Republican caucus finds its spine and other body parts and removes him from office via impeachment or the 25th Amendment; or 2) a Big Mac send from Heaven does its job.

There is a third way: Apple sues and this gets blocked by a judge and remains in legal limbo until either of the choices above happen.

We just had a guy in office that hid his cancer diagnosis, has dementia, couldn't hardly speak, shook hands with ghosts, and didn't do anything to try to stop the Ukraine War... In fact, he let it happen right under his nose. With all of those issues, the Democrats failed to invoke the 25th Amendment.

If you're gonna be a far left wing poster, the Reddit political forums are a better home for you.

 

[macfacts]

Wouldn’t all the parts shipped from china get tariffed anyway?

The most expensive part is probably the cpu and you can't build a factory for that, the Taiwanese/Chinese government isn't going to allow that

 

[Jay Tee]

That's quite a broad claim you're making about more than 77 million voters. The few of his supporters you might know may be uninformed, but I can assure you there are quite a lot of us out here who overwhelmingly support this pro-American agenda. Any U.S. president has considerable leverage to incentivize American companies to bring their manufacturing back to the US. Prior to Trump, very few (if any) others have dared to wield it in such a way. If he is successful in these attempts to mitigate much of the unfair global trade imbalances, while also bringing a large portion of manufacturing back to the States, it's just one of the many reasons he will be seen as one of the most consequential presidents in this country's short history.

This second term started out well, but over the last few weeks, things have taken a nose dive, ethically. He appears to be a different guy than the one bleeding from a near-lethal gunshot wound, raising his fist, and with strong determination, saying "Fight, fight, fight".

Something has gone very, very wrong. There are some contradictions, and I hope he turns this ship around.

 

[Dutch60]

….. and didn't do anything to try to stop the Ukraine War... In fact, he let it happen right under his nose….

Do you think Trump is helpful and effective in stopping this war by supporting Putin?

 

[macfacts]

That's quite a broad claim you're making about more than 77 million voters. The few of his supporters you might know may be uninformed, but I can assure you there are quite a lot of us out here who overwhelmingly support this pro-American agenda. Any U.S. president has considerable leverage to incentivize American companies to bring their manufacturing back to the US. Prior to Trump, very few (if any) others have dared to wield it in such a way. If he is successful in these attempts to mitigate much of the unfair global trade imbalances, while also bringing a large portion of manufacturing back to the States, it's just one of the many reasons he will be seen as one of the most consequential presidents in this country's short history.

Here's one company that tried to make shower heads in USA and zero people bought it cause it cost more.

 

[Dutch60]

This second term started out well, but over the last few weeks, things have taken a nose dive, ethically. He appears to be a different guy than the one bleeding from a near-lethal gunshot wound, raising his fist, and with strong determination, saying "Fight, fight, fight".

Where you impressed by him then? I think that many Americans were and that this also helped him to get more votes(?). That’s what I found scary.

Something has gone very, very wrong. There are some contradictions, and I hope he turns this ship around.

 

[macduke]

The problem is that it won’t be 25%, though. This is Trump. His opening threat is 25%. If Apple doesn’t do it, he’ll just keep increasing the tariff until they do, or until enough people get pissed off and it hurts midterm elections. And even that is a maybe. It just kinda depends on his mood and what he recently watched on TV or heard some grifter say on a podcast.

 

[bsolar]

My whole point about the lack of US autos in the EU, is when European consumers look to buy a their next car, most US brands aren't even an option because of the restrictions the EU imposes on US cars.

Most US brands are not an option because they stopped manufacturing the kind of cars that sell in the European market. Very few people in Europe are going to buy something the size of a Ford F-150 since it would be very impractical in most European settings, but that's what sells in the US.

Ford did sell a lot of cars in Europe with the Fiesta and Focus, which are much more compact and well suited to that market. They discontinued them though, likely because the profit margins on large trucks and SUVs are better.

 

[bsolar]

The United States Constitution gives the United States Congress the authority to place tariffs. In turn, the United States Congress has delegated its authority to the President. One example of this is the Tariff Act of 1922.

The relevant act is the Trade Act of 1974, but the ability to impose tariffs and sanctions is limited to combat "unfair foreign trade practices".

The issue is in many of the cases where tariffs are being imposed there are no unfair foreign trade practices to speak of: the reasoning used by the US is that if there is a trade imbalance there must be an unfair practice at play but that's a very questionable assumption.

Concrete examples of "unfair practices" presented by the US are not always that convincing. As example, VAT in the EU is being portrayed as unfair to importers, but that's not true as VAT is ultimately effectively equivalent to a sales tax, which the US doesn't seem to consider unfair.

Many don't really understand how VAT works though, so they are vulnerable to disinformation.

 

[H2SO4]

Thank you for summing up capootalism and exactly why it doesn’t function. Capootalism is the problem here, and it’s making the majority of Americans poorer by the hour. We are following capitalism off a cliff and everybody is distracted by the orange 🤡

People like Trump are the ones to blame and until they are honest with the public about how and when it happens they have no hope of fixing it.

 

[Dutch60]

Nobody cares what Kuo thinks. Stick to rumors instead of opinions.

I rather stick to facts.

 

[Dutch60]

Thank you for summing up capootalism and exactly why it doesn’t function. Capootalism is the problem here, and it’s making the majority of Americans poorer by the hour. We are following capitalism off a cliff and everybody is distracted by the orange 🤡

Sorry for my ignorance , but what exactly is “capootalism”?

 

[WeLikeVodka]

Do you really think anyone in Europe says, “I wish my next car were an American car”?
Or Japanese say “I really want a Cadillac or Ford, but darn those barriers!”
Or Chinese say, “I really want a Tesla instead of a BYD, Xpeng, or Xiaomi.”

Ask the fundamental questions first.

In China, consumers were buying iPhones at record rates even when there was a 16% VAT on imported goods. Today, you couldn’t find anyone wanting to buy even with a $350 discount and 13% VAT because of competition.

Cars seem to carry a much more nationalistic vibe. Meanwhile with electronics everyone probably knows what Samsung or LG is and has experience with their products. American cars have far worse 3rd party support in Europe.

Of course iPhones are much harder to justify when there is competition especially when they aren't built with the chinese market in mind

 

[WeLikeVodka]

That 25% tariff will be passed on to the consumer. I'm pretty sure companies can afford to do so since most people buy electronics through financing so Apple won't be an exception. And this is how the baseline iphone is gonna be €1500 and enable others to charge more as well unless you're willing to buy it from aliexpress for a third of the price with some chinese apps here and there.

 

[t0rqx]

US will now feel the high prices other parts of the world are paying for their products.

 

[WeLikeVodka]

Thank you for summing up capootalism and exactly why it doesn’t function. Capootalism is the problem here, and it’s making the majority of Americans poorer by the hour. We are following capitalism off a cliff and everybody is distracted by the orange 🤡

the free market isn't bad by itself but it needs to be severely regulated and we can't do that because the internet will start screaming they're gonna feed us with communism and the gay agenda.

There's a good case to be made that the republican party is far-right nowadays