You post is poorly researched and based on BS. You could ship raw material from antrarctica and it would only increase the cost per unit a minscule amount. Apple would make just as much money if manufacturing was done in the USA. I hope one day Free Traitors will come to their senses and quit denying.
No, central_va, you don't really know what you are talking about. There are literally hundreds to thousands of parts that come from all over the world that go into Apple products. . . and they have to be brought together at just the right time. Apple has perfected the just in time inventory system that works because many of the sub-assembly-contractors are fairly close together, in China. . . and Apple can ramp-up production quickly in response to market forces. In the United States, that is not the case any more. Too many bureaucratic hurdles to leap over. . . not to mention problems with customs for many of the imported parts.
At Macworld last year, i was discussing an innovative product with a long-time US manufacturer who had just made the decision to move his line to Asia. Why was he jumping ship? He didn't want to—he was a conservative patriot, a wounded veteran, a Republican, and had fought the move for years—and it galled him to do it. But because under US rules, EACH time a minor change was made in his products manufactured here, he has to go through an entire months long approval process with the Underwriters' Laboratories BEFORE he gets approval in his state to even start manufacturing it. . . a minor improvement that changes the design for efficiency of manufacturing takes MONTHS to get new approvals. . . where an imported device of exactly the same design DOES NOT REQUIRE IT! The straw that finally broke his back was a new ruling that if a product had not been produced or assembled for three months to even to start-up his production line with the SAME product an identical product would have to be submitted for similar months longs approvals, to make sure nothing has been changed, before he could resume production! It was uneconomical to run the assembly lines so sporadically or for such small runs. . . His profits fell through the floor with the new rules.
He WANTED to keep manufacturing here, but the bureaucracy made it impossible to do so and make a profit and keep ahead of the competition. Literally IMPOSSIBLE.
Thus, he was laying off 250 workers at his California Plant and moving his manufacturing to Indonesia.
He developed this product category, but by the time he got it to market, and the leaks in the approval agencies, there were a dozen identical Asian knockoffs being sold because of the manufacturing delays imposed by bureaucratic redtape in the USA. INSANE!
in Asia, he can make a design change and have it on the assembly line in a week. . . not months.
When are YOU going to wake up to the real reasons why manufacturing has fled the United States?