• Jimius@discuss.tchncs.deBanned
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    12 days ago

    It’s a common myth, that some people believe that the US can already make everything it needs but is not doing it because China is cheaper. So now that China is more expensive thanks to tariffs, all these US factories are going to boom and create millions of jobs.

    Except a lot of these factories don’t exist in the US, at all. For reference, the whole US has only 1(!) rare earth refinery. Meanwhile China has 90% of the global refining capabilities.

    • Higgs boson@dubvee.org
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      12 days ago

      What America lacks isnt only factories and raw material refining capacity. China’s central planning and industrial clusters are important, and they are also backed by a skilled workforce. Those things dont just magically appear. They are built up over time through both market incentives and government support.

  • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldM
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    12 days ago

    While having every single component of the iPhone being manufactured in the US (something along the lines of RCA pre-1970) is indeed pure fantasy. You could hypothetically assemble the iPhone in the US, with many of the components being locally produced.

    But for that, you would need a competitive smartphone market (i.e. no 35% margin for Apple, they would have to deal with 2%-3% profit margin, 5% tops) and Americans consumers would have to be exposed to the true cost of the device. No annual upgrades through your carrier. You pay $1,500+ for a baseline iPhone and you expect it to last for ~5 years with occasional repair.

    • Cheems@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      And then we’d have to raze our landscape and destroy a lot of stuff for mining

      • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldM
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        12 days ago

        I meant that in theory a certain % of the components could be produced in the US. Say the CPU could be manufactured at a TSMC plant in Arizona and the semiconductor validation/packaging done in one of the recently opened plants for these sort of services (the previous US administration did award some grants specifically around validation/packaging).

        Of course, many of the components cannot realistically be produced in the US. I am just going through a “what if” scenario.

  • De Lancre@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Oh boy, it’s russian-putana’s regime 2.0 all over again. Even recall same news like “russian-made iphone” Yep, been there. Good luck folks, next on the agenda are censored internet\media and beaten to death protesters.

  • Enzy@lemm.ee
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    13 days ago

    Yeah that’s because it doesn’t contain any eggs.