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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the screwed! dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

A Tiny Screw Shows Why iPhones Won't Be 'Assembled in U.S.A.'

In China, you will also find one of Apple's most important markets, and over the last month the risks that come with that dependence have become apparent. On Jan. 2, Apple said it would miss earnings expectations for the first time in 16 years, mostly because of slowing iPhone sales in China. On Tuesday, the company is expected to reveal more details about its financial results for the most recent quarter and its forecast for the coming year.

In 2012, Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, went on prime-time television to announce that Apple would make a Mac computer in the United States. It would be the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers, and the top-of-the-line Mac Pro would come with an unusual inscription: "Assembled in USA."

But when Apple began making the $3,000 computer in Austin, Tex., it struggled to find enough screws, according to three people who worked on the project and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.

In China, Apple relied on factories that can produce vast quantities of custom screws on short notice. In Texas, where they say everything is bigger, it turned out the screw suppliers were not.

Tests of new versions of the computer were hamstrung because a 20-employee machine shop that Apple's manufacturing contractor was relying on could produce at most 1,000 screws a day.

The company could face more financial pressure if the Trump administration places tariffs on phones made in China — something the president has threatened to do.


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  • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:45PM

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:45PM (#794085) Journal

    Many of the other comments have missed one key point.

    It's not about this screw. It's trivial to find another source for this specific fastener and ship it in. The underlying story and the point is that adding in that shipping for this part and dozens of other parts makes it less agile, less efficent, and less profitable to manufacture things in the US. We do not have the required side industries or the efficiency in our existing industries to support a large manufacturing operation.

    They aren't wrong.

    We shipped those machines, plants, an jobs overseas. We've done it as an intentional economic policy for decades. Reversing that will not be an overnight change. It will take a significant amount of time and money including structural changes to how we educate our current and future workers. The $640 Billion question is "Do we want to do that?" The current administration is making noise about it, but this change will require more than 4 or 8 years to make a difference.

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