Funny no one suggests bringing it back to the USA. The margins are good enough on those products, and there is enough room for automation they could do it.

Bringing it back?

The US was never a bluetooth headphone manufacturing powerhouse. We make other stuff, and we should continue to make the high value goods we are specialized in, not consumer trinkets for low wages. Value added in manufacturing is far more important, and building headphones doesn't do that. Leave that to some other place.

I suspect that you have been listening to too much news entertainment. The US manufacturing industry is as big as it's ever been in terms of real output (not jobs). There has more than a trillion dollars in expansion since the pre-covid peak in manufacturing. The US is #2 in the world for gross manufacturing output, and in the top 10 for value add.

A lot of u.s manufacturing capability for electronics is paid for by military contracts. The U.S manufacturers don't even try to compete with China because military contractors are not allowed to make stuff there.

Why shouldnt the us and the eu plus friends manufacture bluetooth headsets with the aid of high tech robotics? As soon as that type of high volume low price manufacturing moves back you will see a lot more innovation. This will only benefit everyone’s progress including in non aligned countries. The r&d and training to build and create robotics would be rather welcome.

>> Why shouldnt the us and the eu plus friends manufacture bluetooth headsets with the aid of high tech robotics?

Because:

>> high volume low price manufacturing

Is not possible in the US or EU.

We don’t have the amount of labor, let alone the the rightly skilled labor (I recognize these aren’t “skilled labor” jobs, which we don’t have enough skilled labor for but we also don’t have enough people to do the unskilled labor inline with other parts of the world because we stopped training people for this type of work decades ago) to do this kind of work. We just don’t. Especially not at the volume you would need for stuff like AirPods or Beats.

The Foxconn fiasco in Wisconsin was a grift on many, many levels - but the labor part of it was never taken care of even before that whole thing blew up.

The reality is, if you were to manufacture something like AirPods (let alone an iPhone) in the US, you would be not only doubling or tripling your labor costs, you’d be getting shittier labor for your money. Not to mention the additional expenses and tariffs of having to recenter all of the material imports and parts into the US from other parts of the world.

I’m all for paying better wages throughout the world, even at the expense of profit margin or raised device prices. It’s a lot harder to justify paying more for lesser-quality labor and to upend logistics because of some false idea that “made in America” means anything.

I think you're right but I disagree with your assertion that we couldn't manufacture these products in the US. Certainly we can't overnight, but it doesn't mean we can't at all or that we couldn't or shouldn't try to, generally speaking. Add to the fact that in China in particular as it grows into a more middle income country it no longer becomes the "cheapest place to build stuff" and instead comes more inline with other first-world economies which will cause companies to relocate factories provided cost is a concern, which if it is, it means leaving China and if it's not then there isn't an argument for not relocating outside of China in the first place.

> It’s a lot harder to justify paying more for lesser-quality labor and to upend logistics because of some false idea that “made in America” means anything.

Well it kind of does right? It's a geostrategic concern where certain components or products need to be made in safe harbors. Instability is bad for business, and the fact that we are discussing this proves the point. Made in America doesn't necessarily have to mean the rah-rah Eagles soaring kind of thing, it can also mean actual national security concerns relative to geopolitical and strategic realities that necesitate hire costs that outweigh other benefits.

Totally agree with everything you're saying. Apple products (along with most consumer electronics) simply aren't strategic to national security so they can and will be continued to be made where profit margins are highest modulo tariffs and sanctions.

> Certainly we can't overnight, but it doesn't mean we can't at all or that we couldn't or shouldn't try to, generally speaking.

Ok, but we have tried. A number of times. And it has failed. Ironically, foreign car companies probably do the best job with doing manufacturing plants in the US right now. But many of the experiments to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially with electronics, have failed. See also the Foxconn disaster in Wisconsin that cost billions but never got off the ground. And the attempts by Apple, Motorola and others to make products here. And the flat-out education crisis that has prevented more chip fabs from even being built stateside.

I’m not saying don’t try. But we have tried. And it has failed. Abs the quality of labor is more expensive and worse and I don’t blame any company for looking elsewhere.

> it can also mean actual national security concerns relative to geopolitical and strategic realities that necesitate hire costs that outweigh other benefits.

Ok, but “assembled in America” wouldn’t solve this. Almost every single part — the semiconductor, the memory, the screens, the screws, the plastic or aluminum housings, the batteries, the battery controllers, are made in China or Vietnam or Taiwan. Using minerals sourced from Africa or South America or whatever. So unless you can move the entire supply chain to this region (and we do not have the labor, skilled or unskilled to do any of that), a supply chain that has been carefully and meticulously setup for maximum tax benefits for all parties involved, what benefit is achieved of having a person in America assemble a phone with an SoC and RAM and an SSD that was still made in Asia? If there is a national security concern, that concern will exist whether the product is assembled in Texas or in Shenzhen. If there is going to be a back door, it’ll come in anyway.

Even the solution of building for fabs here (which we should do and should have started investing in at least a decade ago) is difficult because we don’t have the labor figures to staff this fabs. And those fabs are largely skilled jobs. TSMC and others are offering insane amounts of money to college grads to move to Asia to work in the fabs. Intel is way behind on building new fabs and part of that is labor-related. And although Intel is based in the US, it doesn’t make the chips that run in 99% of the world’s electronics.

I’m not saying there aren’t potential security problems. I’m saying that those will exist regardless of where stuff is assembled and that globally, being able to upend the whole state of supply chain and logistics away from Asia and into another geographic area is something that would take a decade on the low-end and the parts of the world that would be well-equipped to take on that sort of load (Vietnam, India, some parts of Central and South America), have their own major geopolitical struggles.

It’s a difficult problem to solve and we should absolutely be less reliant on one region for all of our manufacturing, but we need to acknowledge this isn’t a problem that can be solved quickly or that frankly, the US is well-positioned to solve at all.

>> The reality is, if you were to manufacture something like AirPods (let alone an iPhone) in the US, you would be not only doubling or tripling your labor costs, you’d be getting shittier labor for your money.

The latter part of your statement is very poorly understood by most people on HN and generally the US. Having toured overseas factories that make goods my company contract manufactures... there is no way American workers at 3x the wages could possibly compete in terms of productivity. You're absolutely right, and while I somewhat believed this to be plausible before I visited, after actually seeing how products were made over there in "skilled labor" factories, it's truly insane.

Because India is also putting a lot of effort into submodule production. It's one thing to do final assembly in a location. What India is doing is putting a lot of effort into building the ancillary industries that accompany final assembly. All those discrete resistors and capacitors that go onto the PCB have to be sourced from somewhere. If you run out the line can't do anything. This doesn't happen in cities like Taipei, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen because there's literally infinite amounts of these commodities in the area thanks to all the manufacturers of these commodities.

Nobody in the US makes SMD parts anymore. It's all higher up in the value chain. But those parts, even if they're commodities, still need to be made. India is going for it which is why Apple is diversifying there instead of the US.

IMO, since Apple's public, it would dig too deeply into Apple's short-term profitability and growth, making it a no-go for its voting shareholders.

Put it to a vote.

Rich people hold most of the shares and they don't want people to know that they're just as self-centered as the rest of us (likely more which is partially what inflated their coffers to begin with, but that's just subjective assumptions).

Time to put the ESG/political posturing of major financial firms to the test, I suppose?

> Time to put the ESG/political posturing of major financial firms to the test, I suppose?

Fastest way to end ESG posturing I suppose. Although ESG concerns don’t typically include “made in America”. It’s not clear to me how that’s be an ESG thing.

I did and one option in order to keep costs low is to rely more on high end automation. And when there is no capacity then have it spread around allied countries first. It makes sense from a strategic point of view. Countries such as india have no issue, as we see in the comment section and its actions, to look after its own citizens first. Why shouldn't we follow a similar approach? Why send manufacturing to countries that blame their issues on us and first chance they have to take selfish action they do it. Shouldn't we also (by we and us i mean all aligned countries including those in asia and latin america) look after our own first? It feels like so often we help nations develop only to have it backfire later on.

Well margins are good because they build cheap and sell expensive. Isn't it?

That and ukraine once the war is over and simply automating more and bringing manufacturing back in the west and western allied countries.

I sort of work much on automation. Once upon a time in a Canada futon factory I worked as summer jobber. They had a automation packing machine that is like getting broken every two or three hours so the whole line of workers have to wait for it to get fixed, like most my later working scenarios. I do believe I have pretty solid engineering background. The biggest problem of automation is the mechanical parts are so easy to break down. The second problem is electronic chip mostly last two years, if they are located in a very complex place (inside an engine, tall building roof etc), repair and replacement cost is prohibitive. Untrained and transient labors hardly think of the two problems.

while doers do, haters hate. It is complex.

So more expensive products and less jobs because of automation.

Next economic crisis here we come.

This seems like a luddite's argument. Automation tends to make things less expensive, and automation hasn't lead to economic crisis' in the past

That's like saying computers are going to destroy a lot of jobs and cause an economic crisis, when in reality the opposite happened

And a lot of automation in manufacturing doesn’t negate the need for human labor anyway. It’s still faster, more efficient, and better QA in many cases to have humans assemble certain things than to use machines. That won’t be the case forever, but the level that people think that the automation is going to be superior or even faster than the human element is often forgotten.

I agree with you that automation doesn’t necessarily lead to a loss of jobs. It can create opportunities for whole new skills and job types.

The struggle has been, especially in the US, that we haven’t then properly prepared or skilled people to do the new wave of jobs that can’t be automated.

I always think of this article [1] from January 2017:

> When the German engineering company Siemens Energy opened a gas turbine production plant in Charlotte, N.C., some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions. But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education.

So out of 10,000 applicants, less than 1500 were even qualified to interview for a job, of which they only had 800 positions. That’s a problem but the solution isn’t to shun automation.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-...

So why was it necessary to shift production to China?

Automation tended to kill blue collar jobs, and if you don't have job even cheap is expensive.

The next wave of automation will kill the higher value jobs too.

> So why was it necessary to shift production to China?

It wasn't necessary. You're conflating necessary with desirable.

The gap between the two is an increased profit margin, which is desirable for most corporations.

Further, the CCP is becoming both dramatically more hostile to business in general and more dangerous as a foe to liberal, democratic nations (including Taiwan most prominently), while simultaneously the financial cost of operating in China has continued to climb by the year (which is a trend that is unlikely to significantly reverse). The China discount for offshoring isn't nearly what it was 15-20 years ago.

The disaster that Russia is causing in Europe is a small hint of what China might cause in Asia in the coming decades. Russia's perceived capabilities weren't nearly what the West thought they were; China's military capabilities are more likely to exceed our expectations (in recent history China has more commonly followed the path of hide your strength and bide your time, as opposed to Russia's vacuous boasting), and it's backed up by a gigantic economy with manufacturing that Russia could only dream of.

Thats the catch. Automating here in the west means we can maintain a lower price while creating jobs that would otherwise be lost altogether. I think returning manufacturing with these constraints in mind is a must.

You can't just retrain workers from the jobs they replaced to new jobs.

Takes time and effort but it will be worth it in the end.

Central America has some very hard to solve cartel issues.

End the drug war and the problem will solve itself.

This statement makes no sense. Ending the drug war will not automatically end the existence of cartels.

It just takes away 90% of their revenue, which is effective enough.

The issue is that the cartels are now endemic to the region. They're part of the government, they're extorting legal businesses, they're laundering the money and investing into legitimate businesses. You can't just undo their influence.

You can still take away 90% of their revenue. There is no credible solution that does not begin with that step.

How does ending the drug war take away 90% of their revenue. If you legalize drugs, the cartels would become legitimate producers and corner the market through fear and intimidation.

#1 The price will drop to the floor.

#2 Most drugs can just as easily be produced domestically by pharmaceutical companies.

#3 Of the drugs that can't be produced domestically, the Mexican cartels are just middlemen that can be cut out entirely. There's no reason drugs from Colombia need to transit Mexico.

#4 If you're worried about Colombian cartels - see points #1 and #2.

We already went through this with alcohol and organized crime.

I think logically the path for these is to become legal business entities no?

It worked with alcohol, why not with other drugs?

You don't see a lot of illegal speakeasies and moonshine stills around, do you?

So.... you're saying we shouldn't end the drug war? Because without a doubt that would have a massive impact on cartels.

> So.... you're saying we shouldn't end the drug war?

You might want to reread his post or take reading comprehension lessons.

No, I comprehend just fine. Parent poster is making a completely unnecessary comment in order to play devil's advocate, when we all know universally that ending the drug war is an important step in the conflict against an organized crime unit which came to prominence because of said drug war.

I think you are actually not comprehending. I never said we shouldn’t end the drug war.

The original statement was derisive without actually offering any useful criticism, and I called it out by taking it to its logical conclusion. If you want more thoughtful replies, it starts with your own comment.

They aren't only into drugs - cartels are around all products.

They don’t just sell drugs. They’re woven into whole economies from tourism to construction and beyond.

Evidence from California seems to suggest that ending the drug war locally has actually strengthened cartels: https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-09-08/ess...

I'm curious why growers feel it's still more advantageous to illegally grow? It must mean the risk/reward still dramatically favours illegal production. That's what needs to be addressed.

I think coffee/tobacco is probably a good example of what can be achieved with legalizing drugs. It might be the path to it is a bit slow as there's a transition, but I don't see why other drugs couldn't end up similarly to coffee.

Heck, you could argue it for everything even. Why do fruits and vegetables farms don't feel like going the illegal production route?

> Heck, you could argue it for everything even. Why do fruits and vegetables farms don't feel like going the illegal production route?

I’ve never illegally bought drugs but I know people that have. I would not be comfortable doing it, but plenty of people are. Drugs, especially legal ones, are expensive.

I’ve never illegally bought fruit and I do not know anyone who has. I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable doing it. Legal fruit is not expensive.

> Legal fruit is not expensive

Assuming we agree they aren't, why is that?

Or in other words, if we're saying it's because drugs are still too expensive and somehow illegal production can compete better on price, why is that?

Especially with weed, the process is so similar to any other commodity agricultural process.

> I would not be comfortable doing it, but plenty of people are

This seems transitory to me. If we take this separate to the price argument, I think it must be restricted to people that were already doing so prior to legal alternatives. Again, tossing the price factor out, I would suspect all new and future consumer would go to a legal source for purchase.

That said, the article talked about production, not wholesale. So it's not clear from the article that illegal sellers have risen, it's possible your street dealers have been impacted, but that legal vendors or byproduct makers are purchasing from the illegal supply chain still.

> Assuming we agree they aren't, why is that?

Cheap labor. Low threshold for consumers to pay a lot, potentially government subsidy.

Drugs have way higher testing requirements. In California cannabis has intense testing and labeling requirements. Fruit doesn’t seem to. Also taxes of course.

> would suspect all new and future consumer would go to a legal source for purchase.

Oh absolutely agree. I think there’s a cohort that would way the drugs but not be willing to engage in illegal activity.

Maintaining stores and supply chains and not a guy with a burner phone and a beat up Toyota driving to a parking lot probably raises costs too (compared to illegal drugs, not fruit obviously). Same at every step of supply chain. The costs are likely high for compliance etc.

Yes, I'm sure the narco multi-millionaires will happily go back to being peasant-farmers after legalization.

So how do you propose to do that?

alas, the cartels are not bound by normal lobbying rules.

When a poor country takes off, emigration doesn't decrease: it increases, as people become more educated, better informed and can afford travel.

Source? Maybe legal emigration increases, but I doubt that illegal or asylum-seeking emigration would increase. People are fleeing from the terrible conditions in their home countries.

This premise was discussed a few times prominently on HN, and it appears to be accurate. There is an initial surge in people leaving as a country climbs economically; then it tapers off and reverses after you get rich enough to support what I would guess is a broad middle class quality of life.

"New Research Confirms that Migration Rises as the Poorest Countries Get Richer"

"As GDP per capita rises, so do emigration rates. This relationship slows after roughly US$5,000, and reverses after roughly $10,000"

https://www.cgdev.org/article/new-research-confirms-migratio...

Central America is more expensive than Asia.