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All well and fine about AAPL making phones in the US, but the truth is that there are so many problems making that proposition very difficult. One is there is a labor shortage - where are all these workers going to come from?

The wages paid in China are for the Chinese a good rate. It’s a living wage for them as little as it seems to us here. For them, it is also the opportunity to flee rural poverty - something most here only have a vague conception of the reality.

Some will say just use robots - but that is a lot of robots, and where do all the trained technicians that maintain the robots and all the robots come from? Are those robots made here or in China?

Next is plant size - where can a plant employing 500,000 people be built? NYC? Where do you find the land cheap enough to put it on? And all the infrastructure needed from roads to houses to suppliers to grocery stores and hair salons? Where is all of that going to be built - will APPL have to foot that bill as well?

Then there will be the mass waiver of almost every workplace and environmental regulation you can imagine.

Phones, computers from ALL electronics manufactures are built in China, Korea and Japan for reasons other that the price of labor. There is an existing huge concentrated population base with little regulations there that does not exist in the US.

Then there will be the mass waiver of almost every workplace
and environmental regulation you can imagine.

Phones, computers from ALL electronics manufactures are built in China, Korea and Japan for reasons other that the price of labor. There is an existing huge concentrated population base with little regulations there that does not exist in the US.

Bingo...I have worked in the Semiconductor industry for 25+ years and
remember when pretty much every company had their own fab. I
watched as KYEC, TSMC and Charter came online in Asia and US
companies went 'fab-less'. The main reason for this is that manufacturing
IC's is a dirty nasty, process, so with the regulations and cost of compliance, it was cheaper to do it oversea's. That has not changed. While assembling phones is not as impactful, manufacturing the
components is and would be cost prohibitive in the US. Said components
would have to be shipped into the US as opposed to shipped from a local supplier in China and would add cost. So it's not just the labor that needs
to be considered.

An iPhone is a very high volume assembly and automation is a necessity. But you would have only one product or very similar products so automation would be beneficial.

The circuit board assembly is a known quantity and can be automated but you would need several lines.

The challenge would be the enclosure assembly which might have to be done manually but with lots of assemblers... unless you could automate that too.

If you have ever taken an iPhone apart, it is a complicated mechanical assembly that almost necessitates a human being. But maybe this can be automated?

And then there is the supply chain — massive number of parts and lots of money invested to keep the line moving.

Also, the factory would have to be dedicated to this one product. No diversity.