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White House insists iPhones will be US-made – but Apple calls it a non-starter
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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dont know where people are getting the idea that this would make the iphone outrageously more expensive. iphones are already pretty much the phone with the highest profit margin, 54% on the iphone 14max. adding to that, the pay for the average foxconn worker in china isnt as low compared to the minimum wage in most us states as one might imagine, with around 2.80$ compared to 7.25$ minimum wage. its pretty bad, but they arent paid cents per hour. lastly, labor isnt exactly whats expensive about the iphone anyway.
looking at all these numbers, it seems entirely plausible for apple to manufacture iphones in the us while barely raising the price.
besides that, these comments also come off as a defense of sweatshop work. im sure thats not the intent, but you gotta ask yourself what it sounds like when you mock the idea of work being done by (more) reasonably paid people, because it would make your already overpriced toy more expensive. i get that dunking on trump is fun, but this a really weird angle.
Yeah this whole defending cheap foreign labor thing feels kind of weird to me. I might just be showing my ignorance here, but isn't the end-game for globalization about raising living standards around the world? By trading with developing countries, the investment develops their middle class and eventually their wages should catch up with ours.
It feels weird to see people saying that so much of the American economy is suddenly unviable when we have to pay livable wages. If that's the case, that's a bad thing, and it should change. Not that I think these tariffs are the solution.
As I understand it, these sweatshop jobs do resist the standard of living in the areas they are in. The people there don't have the option to work a job that we would consider good. They work the job we consider terrible, and they get paid more than they would doing other jobs.
To make a moral judgement, we must balance between "terrible working conditions, no protections, maximum wealth extraction," on the one hand, and "no infrastructure, no job, no money" on the other. Sadly, there is no profit in making the world better for everyone.