President Trump Makes Deal
China Agrees To Buy $50b of U.S. Agriculture Products
At a meeting held in the presidential office at the White House with China’s Vice-Premier and members of U.S. administration President Trump announced that a deal had been made for China to buy 50 billion dollars of agricultural products from the U.S. The President said the deal even exceeds the full export capacity of the United States. He said this completes the first phase of U.S.-China trade negotiations. He praised China and blamed former U.S. administrations for the unfair trade that existed between the two countries until he slapped tariffs on Chinese products. He suspended the 10-percent tariff increase that was to go into effect. The deal also means that China will now turn to U.S. to buy some of the products that it used to procure from Canada. China is boycotting a substantial amount of imports from Canada on account of the arrest of a Chinese executive at Vancouver Airport. The incident has strained relations between the two countries to breaking point, apparently to the advantage of the United States.
U.S., China Consider Rolling Back Tariffs as Part of Initial Trade Deal
Manufacturers Want to Quit China for Vietnam. They’re Finding It Impossible.
Global companies are rushing to seek alternative bases, only to find even promising countries like Vietnam don’t match up
Wall Street Journal
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam—With the U.S. and China tangled in a nasty trade fight, this should be Vietnam’s time to shine. Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that it will be years, if ever, before this Southeast Asian nation and other aspiring manufacturing destinations are ready to replace China as the world’s factory floor.
The specialized supply chains that made China a production powerhouse for smartphones and aluminum ladders and vacuum cleaners and dining tables are nowhere near as developed in Vietnam.
A Tiny Screw Shows Why iPhones Won’t Be ‘Assembled in U.S.A.’
The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Despite a trade war between the United States and China and past admonishments from President Trump “to start building their damn computers and things in this country,” Apple is unlikely to bring its manufacturing closer to home.
A tiny screw illustrates why.
In 2012, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, went on prime-time television to announce that Apple would make a Mac computer in the United States. It would be the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers, and the top-of-the-line Mac Pro would come with an unusual inscription: “Assembled in USA.”
But when Apple began making the $3,000 computer in Austin, Tex., it struggled to find enough screws, according to three people who worked on the project and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.
In China, Apple relied on factories that can produce vast quantities of custom screws on short notice. In Texas, where they say everything is bigger, it turned out the screw suppliers were not.
[Apple disabled the iPhone’s Group FaceTime feature to fix a bug that made eavesdropping possible.]
Tests of new versions of the computer were hamstrung because a 20-employee machine shop that Apple’s manufacturing contractor was relying on could produce at most 1,000 screws a day.
China’s Manufacturing Loss Should Be Mexico’s Gain
Bloomberg Opinion
But President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is wasting the opportunity.
After two years of a U.S.-China trade war, multinational companies that manufacture in China are getting restless. Escalating U.S. tariffs, on top of rising labor costs, stiffening environmental rules, and the heavy, often capricious hand of the Chinese state are forcing manufacturers to rethink their global presence. Dell Technologies Inc., Apple Inc., Nintendo Co., Crocs Inc., IRobot Corp. and GoPro Inc. have announced changes in where they are going to make things. Many more companies will follow.