Little of this is news, but placed in context, it helps to explain the collapse of US manufacturing of high-margin consumer electronics products. The president wants to bring at least some of those manufacturing jobs back to the US. Aside from a few thousand jobs in Austin, Tex., where Samsung makes the A5 processor, at the heart of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, that isn’t going to happen.
So where do we go from here? The outlook for US manufacturing and the high-paying jobs it once provided is, frankly, grim. There is no new engine of economic growth on the horizon. Globalization has provided US corporations with ample political cover to lay off engineers and other skilled workers, pull up stakes, and move their operations to Asia.
Who's responsible? Few would argue that Apple or any other US company has a responsibility to hire American workers if they can assemble products for less overseas. But these same technology companies continue to plead for “reform” of the US visa programs so they can hire more foreign engineers, and “tax holidays” so they can bring back profits from overseas operations. Would those profits be invested in US manufacturing facilities? It’s unlikely, given the fact that many of these same technology companies are already sitting on piles of cash and have shown no interest in hiring more engineers.
There is one government incentive that does make sense: a revised version of the US R&D tax credit. A recent National Science Foundation survey warns that US multinational corporations that have steadily outsourced manufacturing and design jobs are now outsourcing R&D. According to the annual NSF survey of science and engineering employment, US companies nearly doubled overseas R&D employment between 2004 and 2009.
If that trend holds, and US R&D is outsourced, the game is over.
In return for a long-sought permanent extension of the US R&D tax credit, a standard tech industry demand, those highly profitable companies should then be required to invest in US manufacturing, design, and R&D facilities.
free trade or globalization with a trading partner, china, who pay their slaves 1 dollar for every 38 dollars an american worker makes, is slavery, unconstututional but through lobbie bribery it is overlooked as our manufacturing infrastructure is stolen, and small family bisinesses closed in the face of slave goods super stores, stealing the accrued taxation required to maintian our infrastructure---our lawmakers permitting the end of an independent america for the cash in their sleazy pockets
he is inelgible, he listed himself as indonesian when he entered occidental, there is no real evidence proving his place of birth in the USA. Most states have laws, which criminalize homosexuality, he has after the election admitted he is a homosexual, he has committed many acts of treason, treason should be punished, ruling our nation by executive order, ignoring the elected bodies is against the constitution, the number of deaths he is responsible for is continuing to mount...we don't need a criminal as presidentespecially one who absolutely does not understand economics are is actually trying to destroy our nation. if he et al commit anothe relection fraud there will be civil war, or worse
The manufacturing move to Asia did not happen overnight and as the dynamics of the markets change - wages, transportation, the environment, technology, timing - opportunities for US manufacturers, at all levels, will become available.
It is the lack of quality that is bringing at least some production back to the U.S. But the biggest opportunity for U.S. manufacturers seems to be in ramping up to higher volume production where they can compete in terms of flexibility and higher quality. Still, the cost of pulling up stakes in Asia may be prohibitively high or simply impractical for many.
Yes, similar products are available and cheaper from off-shore. But, when a customer is 'educated' about the differences between import quality and domestic, we are able to make a nice profit while operating a safe, environmentally responsible manufacturing plant. AND, our workers enjoy good wages, including retirement and health-care benefits. As the old adage goes, sell on price, and the customer is yours only until the next low price; sell on quality, and you have a customer for life!
Gorski, what do you call the iPhone? Is it not high tech, unique?? The real money in any endeavour is volume. That's why sports stars, movie personalities and large manufacturers make lots of money.
One of my uncles has a factory in New England. He had a product he had designed himself. When that whole category went out of favor he went to contract machining with a couple of CNC machines. It kept him afloat. I will bet, though, that I made more working for large company selling software. When he found an overseas market for his orignal product tough, he started that back up. What we need to do is to recapture the market for high capacity manufacturing.
You make a good point about the eye on short-term profits and the pressure NI felt while working on a long-term project. For public companies, the pressure is on quarterly performance. And if a CEO and CFO do not focus on the short term, they get threatened with removal.
A great deal of the problem is a blind rush to the bottom by the greedy who are only chasing short-term profits. This does not mean we should only build unique luxury devces, it means we should put quality into our product and its sales will support the manufacturing effort. Look at Bic lighters, for example. Best almost-free product around, #1 lighter worldwide. I can buy one for a buck anywhere, and they are made in factories in France and the USA.
Another flaw in short-sighted rushing to the lowest common denominator is in tech investment. If you are ever around Dr. James Truchard of NI, ask him how much pressure he had to overcome from money people when he was devloping LabView, an industry-leading product that would have never existed had money people made the decisions about its development. That product is also made in the USA, BTW. There are many other examples, but I think you get my point.
You know the odd thing, Jmiller, is that many of the manufacturers were still buying their components from the same suppliers they used when their manufacturing was done in North America. The major component suppliers shipped product to Asia and managed inventory on site. There wasn't much of a shift to local components. That had to eat into profits, shipping components to Asia, then shipping finished product back, just for the cheap labor.
And I think final product manufacturers drove companies overseas because of all of their initiatives to purchase companents from "low cost" countries. I wish they would have included the "low qualiy" part in that country's label. But the didn't and so many companies have gone overseas getting components that do not meet the quality requirements that we have grown accustomed to. Rather frustrating.
By experimenting with the photovoltaic reaction in solar cells, researchers at MIT have made a breakthrough in energy efficiency that significantly pushes the boundaries of current commercial cells on the market.
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