Take autos. It take around 30 man hours to make 1 car. If you double wages it does not double the price of the car. Get it?
The labor per iPhone is $16.00USD. If made in America and you paid 10x the cost of labor the labor per phone would be $160.00. So a $800.00 phone would be $960. Take away lower energy and transpiration costs higher productivity of US workers and the $160 margin is reduced drastically.
Good points. Transport costs, particularly from Asia and materials cost, ratchet up cost per unit so that there does reach a point where a tariff we may impose on a particular country like China has a tipping point level for certain products depending in the labor/materials ratio cost to manufacture that it becomes more advantageous for that manufacturer selling in the US market to make it here. And yes I was not saying all manufacturers would flee to other Asian countries.We would have a good chance of relocating back here those that are with a product that is not as labor intensive and selling almost exclusively into the US market which would be good. Others, however that have labor intensive products that sell globally as well as the US depending on the mix might find it makes better business sense to move to another Asian country to avoid the US tariff. I see iPhone has established a plant in India for their higher end products. If Trump extends the tariff to iPhones, would not be surprised if they moved iPhone manufacture to India where they would actually have a chance of capturing some of the 1.3 billion India market and no chance vs Huawei of increasing Chinese market share which is miniscule as well as perhaps opening a plant in the US to sell into our markets.That would not be perfect but better than having them made in enemy China.