Another example is the iPhone reading made in China with a dollar value of 400 but the true value add in China is much lower as all the IP, profit margins, and high value components belong somewhere else.
This means that even though these numbers look very unbalanced it is still Western companies that make biggest part of the profit. (At least so far though things are clearly changing with Chinese companies are climbing up the value chain.)
It is still running on Apple platform. I'm buying an iPhone, because I know that I'll get consistent Apple experience that is same across all of my devices, unlike zoo of Android + Windows/Linux.
> Nobody cares about their operating system except for that one middle aged developer who loves that his apps look native on his macbook.
Nobody* cares.
* - 34% desktop share and 15% worldwide.
How does that follow? I'm saying people buy Apple products for their premium hardware, which rich consumers are more likely to do across all categories. If software mattered, Apple would be losing customers across the board because people spend more and more time in non-Apple software. It's the exact opposite of my claim.
>* - 34% desktop share and 15% worldwide.
I don't think you even understood what I said to be frank, I didn't argue Apple's marketshare, we are talking about where the value in their poduct is, I didn't argue that people dislike their products.
a buggy shitty mess? count me in!
Things aren't even consistent across mac os updates. I think it's much preferable to keep a phone a phone, and the computer a computer.
I only want a macbook because of the hardware. I'd give anything for them to fix the software. but it is what it is.
To be clear, as an f’ing Linux user, the things that make Apple software good, which is consistency, lots of hand holding, and making it really hard to break things badly, are irrelevant to me.
But it’s highly relevant to the vast majority of iPhone users in the world.
I doubt Trump tariffs will be based on value add. It would be a logistical nightmare, and he doesn’t strike me as someone who thinks too deeply about these things.
"While trade rerouting through Vietnam does occur, its scale appears far smaller than previously thought. The study found that in 2021, about 16.1 per cent of Vietnamese exports to the US — roughly US$15.5 billion — could be classified as potential rerouting when analysed at the product level. But when the researchers examined individual firms — tracking specific products flowing from China through Vietnam to the US — the figure fell to just 1.8 per cent, or US$1.7 billion."
https://fulcrum.sg/vietnam-china-and-rerouting-when-percepti...
Of the items that are rerouted, does Vietnam (or other similar countries) tend to move up the value chain over time? Or do the supply chains just stay as they are.
I suspect, possibly hopefully, that over time the "rerouting" countries would evolve from simple assembly/repackaging to sourcing more granular pieces of the manufacturing process from within their own borders. How fast that might happen is another question.
If anyone has any sources on this I would love to read more about it, I'm just not sure how to find them.
IIRC, a lot of stuff that's labeled "Made in Singapore" is/was basically that.
I'd not be surprised if this activity is quite limited in Singapore given that they have been under a tight microscope lately. Money laundering used to be their business but now they are rich and make money "legitimately" and within the "international" framework.
Large companies are well aware of this and happily use their existing Chinese suppliers' SEA entity to avoid sanctions and tarrifs, or to show that they are moving away from having everything Made in China.
To be fair, only gullible or naive people could truly believe that products coming from any part of Asia are not made, controlled, or otherwise influcnced by the Chinese.
That last statement makes it almost meaningless. Then you can also say, no product on this world wasmade withiut US influence. Otherwise all those countries like Vietnam does have a agency of their own, for example (and succesfully fought china before with military)
And south korea and Japan (and Taiwan) also are somewhat out of the direct control of china.
In my experience, no, companies are generally not aware and not accepting of this and brands/licensing requirements ensure that's the case. For sure in regards to valuable trademarks.
A manufacturer would absolutely not want to risk their entire business. And that's all it takes for a brand to pull your license. Now what? Everyone is fired and a $120M contact is lost over a few cents per unit.
It's possible that it happens as Chinese factories skirt the rules and make false presentation, but manufacturers spend a lot of money to send someone to many countries and factories to trial and vet them over the course of years to meet brand requirements for licensure before they begin manufacturing with them and often through repeat checks during the manufacturing process. But I'd say that's rare, again, in regards to branded goods of valuable trademarks.
The root issue is the unchecked market power of businesses and the complete lack of repercussions for corporations and business elites that destroy industries, social systems, and deplete natural resources—without accountability for long-term consequences.
But the harsh reality is that creating a regulatory, taxation, and broader economic landscape attractive to manufacturing would inevitably threaten elites and firms at the top of the economic hierarchy. While there’s nothing wrong with that -- in fact, it’s likely healthy for the economy -- it won’t happen[1]. Those elites and anticompetitive firms abuse their undue influence to subvert democracy and shape laws in order to further entrench their market power.
[1] Or more precisely, it won't happen soon. It's pretty clear that the era we're in is coming to an end but change will likely be slow unless there's a surprise shock to the system.
Don't think of corporations as having agency. Think of them like beasts that have to be herded into the field where you want them. If all your cows are in the neighbor's field, it's not the cows that you should blame and yelling at the cows is not going to help you.
Governments, too, create regulatory, taxation, and broader economic frameworks that influence incentives and shape behavior.
People say things like "corporate profits are too high, we need to tax them more" but the actual reasons corporate profits are high are lax antitrust enforcement and regulatory capture and the proposed tax increase would apply predominantly to domestic businesses, increase the incentives for offshoring and create even more advantage for large international corporations. But tax increases are popular in Washington because then they get more money to transfer to cronies, so it keeps getting proposed as a "solution" instead of solving the actual problems.
Higher taxes for the absurdly rich/corporations could be a good start if the money was put to good use, but taxes ultimately don't solve the underlying issue.
I agree that the core issue is antitrust policy -- and it doesn't have to be this way and wasn't always like this. After the Great Depression, antitrust enforcement ushered in an economic golden age during the 1950s and 60s, boosting prosperity across all socioeconomic groups and lifting lower-income groups the fastest by enhancing competition and preventing concentrations of market power.
Later, regulators embraced 'trickle-down economics' and 'corporate efficiencies,' enabling the rise of giant firms that overpower governments and laws. This shift has led to historically low profits, stagnant growth, declining productivity, and soaring income inequality.
Now the rules-based systems have been co-opted by these giant firms that exploit their market power to subvert democracy and shape laws to serve their interests (and further entrench their undue influence) at the expense of society.
I think this is missing a piece.
Corporations and the government are together as a corrupt system (_______ industrial complex etc.) and then people get mad about it, but many of the problems are structural (i.e. insufficient checks and balances against corruption) so you can't put the blame on any specific person or just replace one evil CEO or Senator and be solved. But that's what people want -- a personified enemy to fight, a simple solution -- so it's what demagogues offer them. They tell them to blame the CEO because it gives people a target for their ire, when the actual problem is that you have to change -- and in order to do that, first understand -- the structures that led things to be this way.
But most people don't have time to read a thousand page healthcare bill to figure out just what's in it that causes things to be this way, so when some talking heads tell them to be mad at the CEOs, they get mad at the CEOs. Which doesn't fix the problem, and that only makes them even madder.
> Afterwards, I worked at the intersection of data science and antitrust law to support collective action litigations.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that employer-based labor unions are useless.
When the employer is in a competitive market, the employer already has little to give in negotiations because the competition is already forcing them to give anything they don't give to labor as wages to customers (i.e. also labor) as competitive prices.
When the employer is a monopolist, at best the union is going to extract part of the monopoly rent, but not all of it, and the monopolist's customers who aren't also employees are still getting screwed. Meanwhile that union then has the perverse incentive to defend the monopoly rather than trying to destroy it, because they're getting part of the monopoly rent, which is a disaster.
Conversely, suppose that local land owners are conspiring to capture zoning boards to keep housing prices high and screwing over local laborers who then can't afford to buy and have to pay high rents. Is unionizing the property management companies going to solve this? Of course not, they wouldn't even be representing most of the people being screwed over and their expected behavior would be to try to negotiate higher wages for the property management employees etc. rather than advocating for zoning reform.
Which hints at what people should be doing instead: Political organizing. Not for a party, but for issues. Get all the tenants and the would-be homeowners who are stuck living with their parents together to pay dues to an organization to oppose politicians who resist zoning reform. Get them out of office. Publish voter guides and use the dues to buy political advertising. Do the same thing for trust busting and getting rid of certificate of need laws etc.
Because that's the problem. Monopolists and the corporations siphoning tax dollars out of the corrupt government are doing this, and you're not.
Apple also has a factory in Brazil that makes most (all?) of iphones and ipads sold in Brazil. Most appliances companies (Bosch, Eletrolux, etc) in the local market also do the same.
> https://antidumping.vn/eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-mala...
I come from a country that does this. Massive deficit with China vs. an equivalent surplus with the EU. Weak manufacturing base that essentially import Chinese, does some packaging and then export it back.