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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

So do the economics actually favor moving some manufacturing back to the US now or is this a token measure just attractive enough because of the right amount of tax incentives mixed with the intangible benefits like good PR?

Whenever I read these "Apple is bring manufacturing back to the US" stories all I can think of is the famous exchange between Steve Jobs and the President where Jobs supposedly said flat out, "those jobs aren't coming back" [0] Granted Apply has been known to make definitive statements like that only to do a 180 not long after.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and...?

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> So do the economics actually favor moving some manufacturing back to the US now or is this a token measure

Haven't Apple always sourced their glass from the US? I thought Corning made most of their stuff in Kentucky, but perhaps I'm wrong.

As far as I understand from this article (page 5), it's not always made in US: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and...

“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”

I suspect there is a completely unrelated reason not mentioned. The Mac Pro isn't being assembled in the US for tax breaks or good PR, it's for the turnaround time on built-to-order machines. I expect a similar sort of reason (i.e. unrelated to economics) is involved here.

> it's for the turnaround time on built-to-order machines

Isn't this only true for the US market?

IIRC, the US accounts for about 50% of their sales, so I doubt it would be that.

Your argument doesn't make sense. If Apple can go from long-turnaround for nearly all of their built-to-order sales (i.e. assembled in China) to long-turnaround for only 50% of their built-to-order sales (i.e. assembled in US), how is that not a win?

I would assume Europe shipping times would be more or less the same from China or US.

I guess I was over estimating the amount of sales happening in APAC.

Apple sells a decent amount of product such as the iPhone in APAC, but let's recall this facility assembles Mac Pros.

Despite outsourcing, the U.S. is still the world's second largest manufacturer.

The economics of manufacturing in the US make sense when the product is mostly made by automated machines. Glass is like that.

I think outlandish statements are a seen as a technique by powerful people to get their message across. I know a guy who is very successful and he makes wild, speculative remarks and sometimes he is very wrong. It doesn't seem to affect his credibility.

The actual assembly of a consumer tech product is generally less dramatic an aspect of the cost than you might think.

Absolutely right. The materials cost isn't affected much by geography, just the labour cost.

Obama has repeated publicly "there are some jobs that are not coming back"[1]

And I think he's right. Modern US production facilities have far more automation requiring fewer, more highly skilled jobs. Barely skilled assembly line jobs just aren't worth the labour costs in the US.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMdkzY-Eivg

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