[Genuine Realist]

Repatriating Apple build sites is a quixotic goal at this point. 

When high-tech manufacturing moved out of the US we didn't just move out the branded companies you know, we moved out their suppliers (sheet metal, ICs, Printed Circuit Boards, etc).  WE moved out the suppliers suppliers, the equipment manufacturers used by the brand name factories, the tool making all of the above depend upon and the skilled workers needed to support all of the above.

If Apple moved a factory back here, it would probably be small, focused on configure-to-order/high-end product and all their material would be shipped from China.

I was one of the lead automation engineers (Stanford Industrial Engineer who actually went into manufacturing!) on one of the very last high-end branded manufacturing sites in Santa Clara county.   By the end the cost of fighting the outsourcing trend was increasingly impossible (read high cost) for mass manufacturing.  Now I spend a lot of time working with Chinese companies that do what I used to do and have been in the Foxconn/HonHai sites building all those iPhones.  The thirty-five year trend of moving manufacturing elsewhere will not turn around anytime soon.

More realistic repatriation goals would be bulky/large items and new manufacturing tech items - basically products where shipping costs are high and we haven't given competitors a 35 year head-start.  Watch Tesla and see how they compete - they have both advantages.

Thanks for the insight. It is always nice to hear from someone who knows. However, to me, that simply puts the issue into the first-step-journey-of-a-thousand-miles category. Outsourcing has ultimately proved too devastating to US manufacturing operations to be tolerable in the long run. It may be difficult, but we should at least begin the process.

Query: In Michael Lind's book The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the New Managerial Elite, he provides the interesting factoid that the cost to build an IPhone would increase by only $2.00 if manufacturing operations occurred onshore. He provided no source.

I found this hard to believe, but Lind is a maverick thinker I really respect. His refined populism matches my own. (Take a look at the signature below.) I'd like very much to credit the factoid, which is always dangerous. You have to be cautious with what you want to believe.

So . . . do you agree? You're in a position to have an educated opinion.

[Genuine Realist]

Repatriating Apple build sites is a quixotic goal at this point. 

When high-tech manufacturing moved out of the US we didn't just move out the branded companies you know, we moved out their suppliers (sheet metal, ICs, Printed Circuit Boards, etc).  WE moved out the suppliers suppliers, the equipment manufacturers used by the brand name factories, the tool making all of the above depend upon and the skilled workers needed to support all of the above.

If Apple moved a factory back here, it would probably be small, focused on configure-to-order/high-end product and all their material would be shipped from China.

I was one of the lead automation engineers (Stanford Industrial Engineer who actually went into manufacturing!) on one of the very last high-end branded manufacturing sites in Santa Clara county.   By the end the cost of fighting the outsourcing trend was increasingly impossible (read high cost) for mass manufacturing.  Now I spend a lot of time working with Chinese companies that do what I used to do and have been in the Foxconn/HonHai sites building all those iPhones.  The thirty-five year trend of moving manufacturing elsewhere will not turn around anytime soon.

More realistic repatriation goals would be bulky/large items and new manufacturing tech items - basically products where shipping costs are high and we haven't given competitors a 35 year head-start.  Watch Tesla and see how they compete - they have both advantages.

Thanks for the insight. It is always nice to hear from someone who knows. However, to me, that simply puts the issue into the first-step-journey-of-a-thousand-miles category. Outsourcing has ultimately proved too devastating to US manufacturing operations to be tolerable in the long run. It may be difficult, but we should at least begin the process.

Query: In Michael Lind's book The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the New Managerial Elite, he provides the interesting factoid that the cost to build an IPhone would increase by only $2.00 if manufacturing operations occurred onshore. He provided no source.

I found this hard to believe, but Lind is a maverick thinker I really respect. His refined populism matches my own. (Take a look at the signature below.) I'd like very much to credit the factoid, which is always dangerous. You have to be cautious with what you want to believe.

So . . . do you agree? You're in a position to have an educated opinion.