Chronicling Trump Right in Front our Noses: The Case of iPhones
One piece of a larger puzzle.
Every day I see stories about the Trump administration that I think warrant discussion, but that I do not have time to fully address. I am struggling to find a nice thematic way to do so, even if I am just sharing tidbits that might be of use later. I was reminded of the Orwell quote, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
In the essay from which the quote comes, he continues thusly.
One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one’s subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one’s thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one’s weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one’s political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.
Now, I will admit that I think that I am right about Trump, so I am choosing here to chronicle examples that I think correctly feed that impression. I will admit that I hope this is helpful for those who are in denial to reconsider what is in front of their noses.
I will also note that maybe this will all eventually demonstrate that I was incorrect.
But here’s the first entry from today in Truth Social.
What I would point out about this statement is the following.
- This is essentially an attempt at centralized control of the economic and business choices of a private entity. This is not a free market, pro-business position.
- It is a blatantly dictatorial approach to governing wherein the president declares something and expects it to be done.
- Tariffs are ultimately paid by consumers. This is not magic money. (Yes, I know that some amount of a given tariff might be absorbed by the producer).
- The reason iPhones are made elsewhere is that it makes them cheaper for consumers. Like it or not, that’s market forces at work.
And look, if one has decided that centralized economic planning is a good thing, then at least be honest about it and stop pretending like the current Republican Party is actually the party of free market economics and is pro-business in that sense.
Has Trumpism done anything more pernicious than kill honesty? Unreality – call it “fake news” or “alternative facts” – is the element of fascism Trump and his enablers have installed that I see as most thoroughly intractable. We are never going to get an honest debate about various policy trade-offs again in my lifetime.
There are currently half a million manufacturing jobs in the US that are unfilled. The number of Americans willing to assemble iPhones is zero. The number of Americans willing to pick strawberries? Zero. The number of Americans willing to do textile piece work? Zero.
This entire undertaking is predicated on a view of our economy that is at least 50 years out of date, and is predicated as well on ancient GOP propaganda about welfare queens taking and taking and refusing to work.
Trump is a moron. No one is assembling iPhones in the US. Not now, not ten years from now. Every time Trump opens his idiot mouth the markets crash. Every time he surrenders, the markets go up. The very people who helped elect this buffoon know full fucking well this whole project is bullshit.
Final consumer price may be a factor, but the main reason is that it’s of long term benefit to the company.
This is true of most company decisions.
On one of his social media posts he claimed he was running the country and the world. Its hard to tell what his goals really are (other than making money for himself*) and how he expects things to work, but it does appear that he really likes being in charge and feeling like he runs everything.
*He had a dinner last night for the people who had invested the most money in his crypto grift. He doesnt even pretend like he isn’t taking bribes. I guess it worked for SCOTUS so why not?
Steve
I guess donating $1M to the inaugural fund and standing smiling next to Dear Leader only gets about 100 days of forbearance.
Rent is coming due, and Apple will simply need to collaborate harder. It would be irresponsible not to, since the board and CEO’s primary business is increasing the stock price.
Looks like the going rate was about $10,000 a day. Time for Apple to move some of its cash reserves into TrumpCoin. Since TrumpCoin is designed to put a transfer fee into the pockets of Trump when it changes hands, this could be a single TrumpCoin passed between corporate entities at incredible speeds, so the rest of the cash reserves are protected from the instability of TrumpCoin.
Huh, that’s almost the single electron theory, but with a TrumpCoin.
That statement on Truth Social is something a politician says, as opposed to something a politician does.
And yet, he’s saying it, and that makes him something other than a supporter of free trade and decentralized economy. He is the one that made the carveout for Apple in the first place.
Russia went down the chute after the end of the Soviet Union ( mainly because there were three waves of brain drain—at one point one European researcher told me that there was nobody left doing rhodopsin research in Russia because they were all in his laboratory in Italy.) plus all the power struggles and Putin’s dead hand on everyone who might challenge his power.
Guess the U.S. will have to learn the hard way as well. Researchers will vamoose out of US universities and company research labs and go places they are appreciated and are not at the mercy of toddler-politicians. We’ve also got the stupidity of the tech-bros of Silicon Valley, who honestly believe that they can substitute Chat-GPT for actual research in a lab.
I suspect that the next main power blocs in the world will be the EU and China, with the U.S. turning into a sulky autarky which will split up into multiple countries.
I would say that in the case of iPhones, the reason they’re made elsewhere is to maximize the profit on a conspicuous consumption item. But no, there’s no economic sense to be gleaned from fever dreams of cellphones of American manufacture. Nor any high-wage manufacturing jobs.
Possible outcome:
All US market smartphones are made in the US, and nobody except the rich can afford them.
At least, until AI precision robotics gets a lot better.
Meanwhile, Apple and Alphabet etc sell smartphones made in India and China etc to the rest of the world.
Which happens to be a rather larger market than the US, surprising as that may be to the MAGA dimwits.
Supply chains probably have something to do with it. None of the chips that go into an iPhone are made in the US. None of the silicon wafers from which the chips are made are produced in the US. None of the displays are made in the US. Apple is a design company. Worth noting that Nvidia, now a bit bigger than Apple by market cap, is also a design company whose products are built outside the US.
@JohnSF: Assembled in the US. It’s an open question as to whether the silicon can/will ever be produced in the US. It’s not an original thought with me, but I note that one consequence of the US’s attempts to block China’s access to TSMC’s leading edge fab production, and the ASML technology that powers TSMC, is that China is directly investing a lot of money in their effort to reproduce the tech.
@JohnSF:
How long until criminal gangs run bootleg iphones across the border?
Whenever a new model year launches, it might even be more profitable than drugs. If there are more iphone users than drug addicts.
@Michael Cain:
And a point that is often missed: the micro-litography machines that cutting edge chips require, and a lot of other related prodution equpment is made only in Europe.
Contra some MAGA mythology, Europe is not, in fact, some decadent and incompetent “euro-weenie” backwater.
Same goes for the ARM chips design.
That’s us, baby.
Do you really want a trade war, Mr President?
Also “assembled” is capable of a lot of finagling: “Import the lot, and put the case on in Alabama” lol.
@JohnSF:
I recall a story from probably the late 70s. We had a tariff on assembled pick up trucks. Japanese pickups would come off the boat with the truck bed sitting on a couple of wood spacers and strapped to the frame. Dockside a crew would cut the strap, pull the spacers, and screw in a handful of bolts. Voila, assembled in Long Beach.
Trump wants to tell universities what to teach, and who to enrol. He wants to dictate employment practices to the private sector. He wants to cancel the licences of media networks which offend him. Surely it past time pondering why he does these things, and why his party smiles and urges him on. The urgent challenge is to stop him before he does even more irreversible damage.
@Ken_L:
Speaking for myself, my main goal here is not to ponder why but to chronicle what is happening.
Part of my goal is to remind myself (and the like-minded) to keep focused and to have items I can find if I want them.
The other part of my goal is to hopefully wake up some people to what is happening. And I don’t mean the obvious trolling types. People read and people share, and if I can get anyone, anywhere, to rethink their understanding of Trump, then that is some level of success.
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