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Should Macs Be Made in USA?

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Below's an email I just sent to Apple feedback. What do people think? I'd like to get discussion going about the ethics of Apple manufacturing all its computers overseas then selling them in the US.

Please communicate to the decisionmakers at Apple:
As you can see by the free-fall of the American economy, the trade deficit really is a very important factor in the impoverishment of the American consumer. I do not get excited anymore about buying another mac because I know that it's made in China or Taiwan. That means that the majority of my money spent on a mac goes overseas and doesn't come back to the American consumer in the form of wages. I would have gotten another macbook this year, but I'd rather not. I feel no loyalty to Apple since Apple seems to have no loyalty to America. If Apple were to start assembling computers in the US and promoting that, at least for American consumers, you might really start to see a spike in Apple's popularity here despite the downtrend in the economy.
For instance, I used to buy furniture from Westelm.com. I don't want to buy from them anymore - it's all imported. Instead, I'm either saving my money or buying from locally produced furniture makes. Let Apple take this is a cue. Our new president is going to be coming down hard on manufacturers that outsource - just wait and see. Apple could find itself slapped with some mighty tariffs that will make it wish it had taken my advice.
 

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While I agree with you in principal, I don't believe that any computer manufacturers actually fully build components AND assemble them in the US. The industry simply doesn't exist here anymore. So, if you're going to knock Apple on this one, you might as well knock all the others as well. Even Dell, who at least assembles their desktop PCs here, doesn't actually manufacture the components here.
 
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Most manufacturers of just about anything don't actually fully build components AND assemble them in the US.
Edited for further clarification.
 
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the carhartts I'm wearing were actually made in the US.. :D




and yes, you'll be hard pressed to find IC stuff actually manufactured in the US.
 
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Well, those types of jobs aren't profitable to have in most "western" economies any more, so what you need to do is offer something of value to other economies instead.

Take Google: They dominate their industry, so money from countries around the globe is flowing back in the US for their services.

The idea is to replace low-wage jobs and low-margin goods & services with more advanced ones that can't be replicated elsewhere. This is obviously easier said than done, but I don't think there's any other way to compete realistically.
 
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Why make 'em in USA? Let's make 'em here Down Under or we don 't buy!! And who wanted all these so-called free trade agreements?
 
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Well, those types of jobs aren't profitable to have in most "western" economies any more, so what you need to do is offer something of value to other economies instead.

Exactly. We westerners couldn't possibly maintain our lifestyle and levels of spending if the goods we want to buy are largely built using labor at our wage expectancies. Slavery has long been outlawed here, so now we merely export it to countries with markedly lower standards of living and pay. Not "quite" the same as slavery, but in some cases it's well near close.
 
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Would be great to look under the product to see "Designed by Apple in Califonia", "Assembled In The USA".

However, I doubt it will happen anytime soon. China has all the factories already setup for this type of production and I think the cost of Apple's hardware would seriously increase as a result.
 
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the carhartts I'm wearing were actually made in the US.. :D




and yes, you'll be hard pressed to find IC stuff actually manufactured in the US.

True Carhartts are a great example of US made and manufactured products. I believe they are made in Detroit? But it is much different than a $1000 computer. People will put up with paying $75 for a coat but not $1500 for a base macbook.
 
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Would be great to look under the product to see "Designed by Apple in Califonia", "Assembled In The USA".

However, I doubt it will happen anytime soon. China has all the factories already setup for this type of production and I think the cost of Apple's hardware would seriously increase as a result.

By a factor of say 30-50% and who would then buy the products on the open market place?
 

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I have many older Macs. My G3 B&W, and 4 G4 Towers are all made in the USA (Assembled here for sure anyway) and look at the price. Macs back then were VERY high in price, much higher than todays Macs. If they totally built every part here I would hate to see the price tag!
 
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True Carhartts are a great example of US made and manufactured products. I believe they are made in Detroit? But it is much different than a $1000 computer. People will put up with paying $75 for a coat but not $1500 for a base macbook.
The US Carhartts are $7 more than the Hecho en Mexico ones. That's about a 30% increase in cost. Extrapolate that over several thousand dollars. Even the (extremely) high end stuff I work on is not made in the US, much of it in Western Europe though.. well.. formerly Eastern European Countries, but still.. I imagine soon they'll be too expensive to do such work too.
 
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Apple has factories that employ over 100,000. You're gonna have a hard time doing that in the US.

Plus, the last thing we need is a price mark-up. Especially when price is the first thing Apple-bashers use to knock down Macs.
 
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Plus Apple don't only employee all their designers, engineers etc. in the US, but they also employ an army of Apple Store employees - something which no other manufacturer does.

Most of the other big manufacturers even outsource a lot of the design and hardware component development to OEM manufacturers.
 
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The US Carhartts are $7 more than the Hecho en Mexico ones.

I had a man come into my work to buy batteries, and he picked up a container of Eveready AA's, and goes on this tirade about how they weren't an American company and blah blah blah.

I asked for his reasoning behind this thought, and he said "Because the label says 'Made in USA for:/Hecho en USA por:'" thinking that "Hecho en USA por" was the company.

I attempted to explain that the label is bilingual due to some California laws about product labeling (not sure if it's true but totally worth a shot), and yet he continued to insist that he was correct.

It eventually broke down into me yelling "SIR THE NAME OF THE COMPANY IS EVEREADY AND THE BATTERIES ARE MADE IN THE USA IT'S A BILINGUAL LABEL AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT GO READ ALL THE OTHER PACKAGES OF BATTERIES HERE AND ANY OTHER STORE YOU MAY GO TO THE RESULTS WILL SURPRISE YOU."

He felt insulted and walked out.

It just surprises me how dumb some people are.
 

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I would love to write a lot about this but I am on an iPhone. American made computers won't work. One the cost would go through the roof and the quality down. I am not American but American made products are NOT know for their quality. Look at the car idustry (ignoring the current issue and focus on quality). I would only buy one or two American cars from the late 60's. American cars are very well known for being very expensive, poorly made and seriously inefficent. American's (I don't want a fight here) are generally not highly educated or motivated as where you can go to china and get a man to build your computers for quarter the price at a higher quality and the infrastructure is there to get them out of the country. For the record, I feel the same about the UK. If where a product is made is important then I think you really need to stop looking at the flag and look at the facts on paper. Who and where something is made is not important, quality and cost is. Also I image apple's factory is full automated. Would a few engineers and a 1000 robot's salaries really matter to the American economic issue.

And even if apple will be put under a traiff in the US they wouldn't notice. It's one Market and they already under traiff in every otherarket and still make a killing. The US Market isn't that important on a global scale.
 
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It's a lot cheaper to use production-based industry in places like China, Taiwan etc. Many companies, Apple included, manufacture their products here because the labour is a lot cheaper.
 

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I would love to write a lot about this but I am on an iPhone. American made computers won't work. One the cost would go through the roof and the quality down. I am not American but American made products are NOT know for their quality. Look at the car idustry (ignoring the current issue and focus on quality). I would only buy one or two American cars from the late 60's. American cars are very well known for being very expensive, poorly made and seriously inefficent. American's (I don't want a fight here) are generally not highly educated or motivated as where you can go to china and get a man to build your computers for quarter the price at a higher quality and the infrastructure is there to get them out of the country. For the record, I feel the same about the UK. If where a product is made is important then I think you really need to stop looking at the flag and look at the facts on paper. Who and where something is made is not important, quality and cost is. Also I image apple's factory is full automated. Would a few engineers and a 1000 robot's salaries really matter to the American economic issue.

And even if apple will be put under a traiff in the US they wouldn't notice. It's one Market and they already under traiff in every otherarket and still make a killing. The US Market isn't that important on a global scale.


Alrighty then... I was hoping we weren't going to get into stereotypes and generalizations, but I see that's where we're going. So, we're done here.
 
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