> 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?

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.

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.

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.

>> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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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.

> 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-...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I think this could stick. The supply chain competence needs to get built in the USA.

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

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

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.

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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