Donald Trump says that if he becomes president, he will “get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China.” Bernie ­Sanders has also called for Apple to manufacture some devices in the U.S. instead of China.  Neither could instantly make that happen. As Steve Jobs once told President Obama when he asked why Apple didn’t make phones in its home country, the company didn’t hire manufacturers in China only because labor is cheaper there. China also offered a skilled workforce and flexible factories and parts suppliers that can, Apple believes, retool more quickly than their American counterparts.

Source: MIT Technology Review

Date: December 6th, 2016

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601491/the-all-american-iphone/

Discussion

1) “The front of the iPhone is made of Corning’s tough Gorilla Glass. Corning makes the glass in facilities in Kentucky, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The touch screen made out of that glass and computer chips underneath is one of the phone’s most expensive components. It costs about $20.”   $20 for the most expensive component!  Why is an iPhone so expensive, then?

2) “An iPhone has about 75 elements in it—two-thirds of the periodic table. Even just the outside of an iPhone relies heavily on materials that aren’t commercially available in the U.S. Aluminum comes from bauxite, and there are no major bauxite mines in the U.S.”   What does this say about globalization?