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adamgordonbell | 5 days ago

Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing in a way that is hard to replicate in US.

They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government, but if it goes as well as last time, they will stop as soon as they can.

In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times. Something about having the whole supply chain in one place and very motivated and it all fell apart when tried to move to US.

So things that took weeks became hard on anytime line.. per Apple in China book.

discuss

order

Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.

ryandrake|5 days ago

> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place

I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines. The companies that process the raw materials are located mostly inland, then the companies that form those raw materials into metal and plastic stock are next door, and then the companies that take that stock and make components are next door to them, and the companies that input those components and output subassemblies are next door to them, and so on all the way down to the harbor where the companies that produce finished products output directly onto the loading docks where the ships await.

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation. How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

thrdbndndn|5 days ago

Sorry, but this sounds more like a myth, or at least heavily exaggerated. Similar to how Japan often gets romanticized.

Organizing the entire chain geographically at the scale you described (inter-city) doesn't bring huge cost advantages by itself. In China labor has historically been cheap, so the transport cost between regions was never the dominant factor anyway.

Most industrial clusters in China formed organically over time just like the rest of the world. Aside from some exceptions like mining, there isn't some master plan laying out entire cities as linear supply chains to the ocean It's not SimCity.

One thing you're right about is that there is less bureaucratic friction or 'lawyers' in the way when it comes to economic development. For the former, it's because economic growth is THE metric for the government, especially at the local level, so they do whatever it takes to make it happen. For the latter, it's because… well, in China no one sues the government, period. I'm not sure it's a good thing.

Disclaimer: I'm Chinese living in China.

brudgers|4 days ago

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

Famously, Houston has no zoning.

coldtea|4 days ago

>I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines

There was a great article from like 20 years ago - it quoted Jobs too on that. I remember Forbes or something like that, maybe this "“How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” — The New York Times (Jan 21, 2012)" (cant open it now)

nerdsniper|5 days ago

So, there’s a decent amount of electronics manufacturing in Anhui Province which is pretty far from the well-known hub of Shenzhen. Anhui is generally more known for their mining industry.

So, to your query, maybe somewhat? But not strictly.

ProAm|5 days ago

Apple as a company that does not pay taxes should at least invest in the country they are located in. *Designed in Cupertino, Taxes paid no where, profit leveraged in the US

mschuster91|4 days ago

> I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines.

... like Factorio, just in real life.

> The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

A lot of that is to prevent our cities from looking like China did before they haphazardly cleaned up shop before the Olympic Games. Remember all the smog alerts? Athletes being afraid the smog and pollution would impact their performance?

> How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

There's a tool for that, it's called tariffs - basically, make it uncompetitive for manufacturing moving off to a country that systematically undercuts pricing even at the cost of its environment.

Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't even have the concepts of a plan on what they want to achieve with tariffs. It's mind boggling to watch.

fuzzfactor|5 days ago

In Houston there is no zoning.

selimthegrim|4 days ago

You know, I think the bigger issue is Tillman Fertitta scuttling the other UT research campus they wanted to set up in Houston because it would screw up his status as chairman of the University of Houston board or something. I guess Houston’s gonna have to make do with these tech jobs.

bluedino|4 days ago

It's like they mastered Sim City and applied it to real life

tedd4u|4 days ago

    'Q:What does China's competitive edge look like in practice?'
    
    'A: One example from The Times article: When Jobs decided just a month 
    before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic screen 
    with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers 
    when the glass screens arrived at midnight, and the workers were 
    assembling 10,000 iPhones a day within 96 hours.
    
    'Another example: Apple had originally estimated that it would take nine 
    months to hire the 8,700 qualified industrial engineers needed to oversee 
    production of the iPhone; in China, it took 15 days. Anecdotes like that 
    leave you "feeling almost impressed by the no-holds-barred capabilities 
    of these manufacturing plants," says Edward Moyer at CNET News, 
    "impressed and queasy at the same time."'
From: https://theweek.com/articles/478705/why-apple-builds-iphones...

api|4 days ago

A popular misconception is that manufacturing is done in China because it’s cheaper. That hasn’t been true for a while. There are cheaper places, many of them. China is now simply the best, at least when it comes to electronics and adjacent stuff.

midnighthollowc|4 days ago

That's pretty amazing, honestly.

Here I can't even get a tradesperson to give me a quote, much less show up on a dime. I guess I need another eight billion dollars, give or take a penny

tedd4u|2 days ago

I should also link Tim Cook's comments on "why China" from a talk in China at a Fortune event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wacXUrONUY

Transcript:

    There's a confusion about China — let me at least give you my opinion. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. That is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. 

    The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill, in one location, and the type of skill it is. The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do, are state-of-the-art, and the tooling skill is very deep here. 

    You know, in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill this room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It's that vocational expertise that is very deep, very very deep here. And I give the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that, even when others were deemphasizing vocational. Now, I think many countries in the world have woken up and said, you know, this is a key thing and we've got to correct that. But China called that right from the beginning.

827a|5 days ago

And, to be clear about one thing (which I believe is also raised in the book): Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies). The story of startups only being able to manufacture in China is a cute tale that is true for startups. For Apple, investing in the strategic capabilities of America's geopolitical rivals was an active decision Tim Cook and other Apple leaders made.

WillAdams|5 days ago

A big change from Steve Jobs' dream of a California factory where sand and other raw materials came in one end, and finished computers went out the other --- the NeXT factory was an excellent exemplar of early automation (greatly assisted by Canon, an early investor).

kccqzy|5 days ago

A company like Apple has very little incentive to care about geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc). In the absence of government intervention, Apple has determined that investing a quarter trillion dollars is the cheap choice; getting the same result in the United States would probably need much much more than a quarter trillion dollars worth of investment. If the United States thought that such investments by Apple would have undesirable geopolitical implications, Congress should have acted a long time ago.

tw1984|4 days ago

> Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies).

Really love your 1990s style western centric view.

Care to explain how fancy western IP is not leading in more and more techs fields, e.g. drones, EVs, renewable energy, robotics, fighter jets etc.? because western companies invested in China and gifted fancy western IPs they don't even have to China?

vsgherzi|5 days ago

Just as manufacturing in China took time manufacturing in the US will take time. The US has lost much of its skilled labor and mom and pop parts shop. If we have any hope of re-invigorating this some large company is going to have to bite the bullet. Chicken and egg problem imo. I'll leave whether this is worth it or not up to the economists.

whynotmaybe|5 days ago

No, US didn't lose it, we collectively decided that whenever we buy something, the price was the most important aspect.

It's like everybody forgot that their neighbour's job depend on them.

We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.

tencentshill|5 days ago

It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes) up on a whim.

rockskon|5 days ago

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing.

This isn't "working harder".

This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".

This isn't "training people in trades".

The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

9dev|5 days ago

Are you sure that’s actually what you want though, competing with China in skilled labor?

throwaway894345|5 days ago

There’s no world in which large scale manufacturing is returning to the US. Not only are our labor costs dramatically higher than in east asia, but we also lack the logistics infrastructure to quickly produce components and get them to their next stage of assembly quickly. And we can’t just build that stuff because we don’t have a totalitarian government that can just bulldoze farms and houses to run a highway or railway. We also are less interested in pollution, which raises the sticker price on US manufacturing.

If we’re serious about it, we are going to have to commit ourselves to economy-tanking tariffs (like thousands of percents) for many decades until the US worker is as poor as the Vietnamese worker.

GeekyBear|5 days ago

> Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing

Apple (and all the other multinationals) are tied to manufacturing in nations with cheap labor.

China is far from the only nation with cheap labor.

> India now accounts for approximately 25 percent of global iPhone production, up from single digits just a few years ago.

https://manufacturing-today.com/news/apple-moves-quarter-of-...

typ|4 days ago

American business leaders have (had?) an obsession with gross margin and tech "advancedness." They thought they would be the winner as long as they occupied the high-tech sectors in the supply chain. So they discarded the high-volume, low-margin, low-growth, low-tech businesses like assembly lines and outsourced them. But the reality is that the proximity of the assembly lines creates a cost advantage that attracts more upstream suppliers to surround it. Even Intel was seeking to build more fabs in China before being stopped by the US government.

apercu|5 days ago

Jebus. “It’s hard to manufacture in the US.”

Yes.

That’s what rebuilding capability looks like.

China built dense supply chains over decades. Of course iteration was faster.

Hard isn’t a reason not to do it.

It’s what happens when you’ve optimized for margin and optics and performance instead of resilience.

nutjob2|5 days ago

No, it's local manufacturing theater.

The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not low margin stuff that isn't economic.

Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent administration.

China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it in the US.

Stupid is a reason not to do it.

xmcp123|5 days ago

They won’t just have custom screws, they will sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error, so it matches(like a slightly too large screw going with a slightly too large hole).

On production lines.

Obviously this is not plan A, but their ops team is insane.

Terr_|5 days ago

> sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error

I spent a little while unsuccessfuly trying to recall the jargon or the anecdotal company-name here, but IIRC there was an early pioneer in this where a company making radios (?) tried to develop a software system that would categorize non-conforming parts so that the flaws in different pieces would cancel out.

I don't think it worked for them, at the time it was far more efficient to just spend money on improving the quality and tolerances of the parts.

burningChrome|4 days ago

>> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place and very motivated.

This is the legacy of Tim Cook before Jobs passed. He was the guy who put immense pressure on Chinese factories to deliver on the insane quotas and timeframes he forced on them. He essentially blackmailed companies in order for them to his bidding - threatening to go to competitors if they didn't deliver exactly what he wanted.

The stuff Apple got away with in China could never be repeated here. I mean, you think you can regularly push so many workers to commit suicide, you have to put nets around the buildings in order to dissuade them from jumping off buildings? Yeah, not happening here. Which is why Apple does business there. Its why Tim Cook was able to abuse Chinese labor laws to get them to deliver the impossible, time and again, regardless of the human cost.

ribosometronome|4 days ago

Not happening here? Foxconn's per capita rate during the peak of their suicide cluster was like 1.4-1.8 per 100k, America as a whole averages closer to 12-15 per 100k.

ruraljuror|5 days ago

Good point about the supply chain; and it seems like most responses mistakenly disagree with you.

Thomas Friedman talks about this after his most recent visit to China. Where China excels is through rapid supply chain development by fierce regional competition among several (state-supported/sponsored/seeded?) competitors.

dangus|5 days ago

I get fatigue when everyone claims that all these Chinese businesses are state sponsored.

Do we not recognize that western governments do this too? Do we not recognize that western banks and VC firms are quasi-state institutions? Do we not see western countries continually subsidize businesses by lowering corporate tax rates and giving out cheap loans?

The US government was giving out $7500 per car to buy EVs and the US carmakers still got demolished by better Chinese products.

It’s like the western zeitgeist can’t accept that China is simply out-competing them on pure merit.

It’s not possible for China to have every business be state-subsidized and running a loss. At some point the truth is that China is getting wealthy by selling the most competitive goods. It doesn’t matter that the state “subsidizes” it because the money for the subsidy comes from selling the best and most competitive products.

a-dub|5 days ago

it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing if only to have real-world testbeds for development of advanced automation technology.

it's cool and all that boston dynamics can do what they do, but i wonder if one reason why the chinese robotics industry is so advanced is because they've been able to test in production on real production lines, experiment with dark factories and learn a ton in the process.

it's kind of funny when you think about it. both the west and east are facing down the same set of potential problems that come with real automation of industries that have served as true economic dynamos for decades.

dlenski|5 days ago

> it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing if only to have real-world testbeds for development of advanced automation technology.

Yes, it's a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing, but this probably doesn't qualify.

According to the article, it's a site where they already assemble servers for Apple's own use, and will now start assembling Mac Minis as well. Electronics assembly is, for the most part, a pretty low-value part of the supply chain.

It's not nothing, but it pales in comparison to the scientific and technological sophistication and financial value of wafer fabs and IC test and packaging facilities. (I worked at Intel's flagship fabs in Oregon, and have worked as a consultant with other semi fabs around the world.)

Aurornis|5 days ago

> In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times.

This becomes less of a problem as the product matures.

The Mac Mini is a good example of a design they likely stabilized a while ago.

cobalt|5 days ago

even if the form factor looks similar, the production will change overtime, esp the internals

chrsw|5 days ago

Well put. I tried to explain this to someone years ago after they asked a question like "why don't they just build a factory here?". I was like "you need more than _a_ factory, you need a whole ecosystem of manufacturing". I guess I didn't make my argument clear enough based on their response.

I think the USA has been very clear based on our actions over the past 4 or so decades: we don't want this kind of labor in this country. I don't see any material changes despite the recent puff pieces and political grandstanding.

msabalau|4 days ago

It is really unclear why you think that either the political interest or strategic logic of not wanting to rely on manufacturing in China, and having some on the value being created here goes away, or is some idle whim.

Sure, if it took decades of slow patient effort to create the current situation, it might take decades to unwind it. And, sure, the US political system is exceptionally bad at industrial policy.

But, at the end of the day, the political and military logic is, and will be for the forseeable future, get your supply chains out of China. Just because it is slow and difficult doesn't there is any reason to believe the pressure will relax. (Putting aside the possibility of an AGI/robotics revolution)

0xWTF|5 days ago

Came here with a similar comment, pasting here to avoid another top-level comment tree.

====

I bought a mac mini a year ago for $599. Personally, I'm pretty sure I would pay another $50 if it said "Made in the USA" on it. Maybe $80. Not sure I would pay $100.

But I worry this will prove to be like when Daimler bought Chrysler and shipped the Crossfire fully assembled except the rims, which were bolted on in the US so they could say it was "made in the USA". They only sold 76,014 and now Daimler extracted itself from Chrysler, so maintaining them has become a bespoke hobby.

hn_acc1|5 days ago

Crossfire was an interesting car - looked at them for a bit, but needed a 4-door..

If I was in the apple ecosystem (I prefer PCs with Linux, Android), I would pay $100-200 more for a mac mini made in the USA if there were actual benefits, like most of the additional cost went to paying domestic labor, better parts availability, better repairability, etc.

Romario77|5 days ago

if you look at Mac Mini design, it didn't change much in many years (2011-2024 is practically the same)

https://preview.redd.it/always-loved-the-design-of-the-mac-m...

so maybe that's the reason they chose it. They just designed a new iteration in 2024, so maybe they don't expect much change for a while.

ccgreg|5 days ago

The guts on the inside changed several times during that timespan.

leokennis|4 days ago

> They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government

I chuckled out loud at the huge-ass-safety-hazard-in-any-manufacturing-environment US flag thumb tacked to the factory wall. It's all wafer thin gold leaf to appease the toddler in command.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...

lenerdenator|4 days ago

At a certain point, if you want the people of your own country to have any sort of loyalty or deference for you, then you'll need to have loyalty or deference for them.

"But it's cheaper in our main geopolitical rival" doesn't quite wear like it used to.

midnitewarrior|4 days ago

The manufacturing facility they are committing to is 8-12x the size of the average American home at 20,000 sq. feet.

This is a token operation meant to project the idea that manufacturing is coming back to the United States. This is appeasement by Tim Apple.

onlyrealcuzzo|5 days ago

You could prototype assembly in China, then have everything ready to go, and do mass assembly elsewhere.

bmurphy1976|5 days ago

The term for China's manufacturing advantage is agglomeration. The US is never going to be successful with these manufacturing initiatives until the US government gets its act together and starts rebuilding all the infrastructure that has been destroyed over the last 50 years. That requires more than just tariffs. It requires actual investment. Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything. It's actually why silicon valley is so successful because it is an agglomeration of the tech industry. We need the same for manufacturing if we ever expect to do it again.

shiroiuma|4 days ago

>Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything.

This isn't going to happen. The US government these days does not care about investment in things like infrastructure or education.

brightball|4 days ago

Yep. Stories like that are the strongest case to protect US on shore manufacturing. All of the knowledge, skill talent and associated supply chains naturally colocate.

NetMageSCW|5 days ago

The press release says they’ve been making their own servers there successfully so it doesn’t seem like there is a reason they would stop Mini manufacturing quickly.

modeless|5 days ago

They did the exact same thing with Mac Pro in 2019. I notice they don't say they'll stop manufacturing the Mac Mini anywhere else. This is a political thing and will change with the political winds.

nutjob2|5 days ago

Two different things. They do not have margin to preserve on the servers.

If I was interested in "performative local manufacturing" I'd also build my own servers, it has the least economic impact.

vondur|5 days ago

I doubt the MacMini is a high margin product for Apple. I'd agree it's probably one of the more simpler items to build in their product line.

yreg|5 days ago

Yeah not high margin but rather low volume.

vablings|4 days ago

The Mac Pro is already made in the USA and has been for a long long time, at this same facility the apple server is also made.

asimovDev|4 days ago

to be fair it's not clear if Mac Pro will continue to exist, it's been in a limbo for a while. When I saw this post on the front page my first thought was "oh, this is how they solve the 'We need to have a product assembled in the US but we only have Mac Pro that we do not want anymore'"

Neil44|4 days ago

A bit like the automotive CKD kits, to comply with trade rules in the most efficient way possible.

chvid|5 days ago

They are also very tied to Chinese demand with about 1/5 of their total business coming from China.

yalogin|4 days ago

They did and stopped previously? Interesting, can you please give more details?

bbshfishe|4 days ago

Chinese manufacturing? It’s not made in China. It’s assembled.

dlenski|5 days ago

> They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government

They'll also hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony with maximum fanfare, at which they'll be sure to fawn over Donald Trump, let him ramble at length, and maybe give him some sort of shiny award.

Let's call it The Steve Jobs American Technology Greatness Prize. It'll be a blindingly flashy PVD-gold-plated 12" silicon wafer with a Mount Rushmore-style portrait of Jobs and Trump etched into it.

xuki|5 days ago

Mac mini is a relatively low volume product for Apple, the margin hit would not be consequential to their bottom line. I'll believe it when they start making iPhone in the US.

tokyobreakfast|5 days ago

[deleted]

ladberg|5 days ago

> Unless of course you need aerospace or space-qualified screws in which case they are definitely coming from the US.

Are you claiming somehow that China would be incapable of making these? Or just admitting that the USG generally restricts such contracts to be sourced from the US only? And what does this have to do with Apple?

Romario77|5 days ago

China had 92 space launches in 2025, so they can make space screws I presume.

embedding-shape|5 days ago

> Unless of course you need aerospace or space-qualified screws

Ok... Is that what they're using to build Mac Minis and is that what they need to iterate on typically?

jodrellblank|5 days ago

China has a peopled space station in orbit right now, a planned human landing on the moon in 2030, and has been deploying moon orbit relay satellites, moon rovers, returning moon samples to Earth, for a future moon base in the 2030s.

dietr1ch|5 days ago

Well, if your Mac mini is to be painted Space Gray then the only way to go is to put in there a few $40 space-qualified screws made in the US to justify the price increase.

RobotToaster|5 days ago

> Unless of course you need aerospace or space-qualified screws in which case they are definitely coming from the US.

So that's why macs are so expensive.

fooker|5 days ago

> you need aerospace or space-qualified screws

This is, largely, a scam made up for costs plus contracting.

throwaway27448|5 days ago

> Kind of hard to deliver those numbers when you can't keep slaves on call in a dormitory.

Or extensive automation, of course. We're alienated from the supply chain probably by design.