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NYTimes, usually in the tank for Apple, raises the curtain in a big article. Comments are interesting, too.

CBS also takes a swipe at Apple: What Apple says about the State of the Union:

Obama thinks that tax incentives and a more educated workforce will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Apple claims that outsourcing manufacturing overseas is its only option. Both are spinning stories. Neither this country (nor any other) can reverse the economic and social forces driving jobs overseas, or eliminating them altogether. Yet companies, particularly high-tech ones, could bring jobs back -- only they don't want to....

And let’s not forget that the ChiComs pay no regard whatsoever to environmental regulations and show no regard for the environment.

If America could employ slave labor and paid no regard to the environment, I suppose we could “compete” with China’s robust manufacturing ability as well.

Of course, even with these two major advantages, the economy in China is imploding and they are about to have a serious situation trying to take care of and control their population.

Omega v Costco, IIRC, is the reason why Apple will never again make another electronics device in the United States. In the ruling, the SCOTUS restricted the first purchase doctrine, saying that since the watches in question were made outside the United States, they had the ability to set their own market within the United States.

Costco had been importing gray market watches from Europe, and selling them in the United States for nearly half the retail price encouraged through the watch maker's US arm. They sued Costco for copyright infringement, as the watches they sold in the US bore a different (and tiny) mark on the case, and the ones Costco were selling didn't bear that same exact mark.

Apple is doing the same thing. US market iItems bear marks that are slightly different than the marks on products sold overseas. More significantly, however, is the ability to instantly add a particular mark for the US market, and through this, they have the ability to ensure that no distribution chain OTHER than Apple can sell iProducts in the US, as well as setting specific requirements on their retailers including minimum price floors.

It is why Nintendo isn't made here, why XBox isn't made here, why virtually every popular consumer product isn't made here - so that there is no ability for an open, free and competitive market to pressure the company into lowering prices.

No tech company is coming back to the United States until the First Purchase doctrine is applied to ALL products, manufactured in or outside the United States.

Thanks for posting.

I found some very interesting comments about ‘enlightened self interest’ at your link to the CBS article.

‘Enlightened self interest’ or Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ (”... By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention...”) are no longer in play under ‘Globalism’, and ‘Free Trade’ since large international corporations are run by those who no longer see themselves as citizens of the US but as citizens of the world.