Andy Meek appears to be more of an entertainment reporter than a technology reporter for website BGR, and he doesn’t appear to be on board with President Trump‘s tariffs approach, but he gets a lot correct in his midweek analysis about Apple‘s vulnerabilities in China:
…the fact of the matter is that when it comes to Apple, iPhones, tariffs, and China, Apple isn’t a victim here. It’s actually an accomplice to its own vulnerability.
For more than two decades, Apple placed an enormous, calculated bet on China. Under (first COO, and then CEO) Tim Cook (pictured above), the company offshored almost every part of its hardware operation. Assembly, components, labor, and the entire manufacturing ecosystem were yoked in large part to a single country, the People’s Republic of China.
Cook didn’t just outsource manufacturing. He optimized the heck out of it. He built a just-in-time machine that could move tens of millions of iPhones with robotic efficiency. Apple became a poster child for globalized tech production. Shareholders and Wall Street cheered. For quite a while, the going was good.
But what they were all really applauding, whether they realized it or not, was the concentration of risk — in a country that is increasingly hostile to US interests, intolerant of transparency, and known for playing politics with corporate access.
Meek also reports that more than 90 percent of iPhones are still assembled in China and a majority of Apple’s Mac products and iPads are put together there. He adds:
And when the world began waking up to the China threat, what did Apple do? Arguably too little, too late. Instead of aggressively moving production to friendlier shores, Apple tiptoed. It opened some assembly lines in India. It shifted a few MacBooks and iPads to Vietnam. But it didn’t break the habit. It couldn’t. China isn’t just a cog in Apple’s machine — it is the machine.
Yes, tariffs suck. But you know what sucks even more? A trillion-dollar company outsourcing leverage to a communist regime that censors, coerces, and manipulates.
Know who else is waking up too late? Wall Street investors, many of whom manage your retirement funds.
