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RUSH: The New York Times over the weekend had a story about why Apple\u2019s products are assembled in China. Why aren\u2019t they made in America. Apple has something like 43,000 employees in America, not counting the retail employees, 43,000 employees at their headquarters in Cupertino. It\u2019s a long piece that prints out to 14 pages. It recounts the fact that Obama once had dinner with all these high-tech guys out in California, Jobs and Zuckerberg and so forth, and at that dinner Jobs told Obama, (paraphrasing) “These jobs are never coming back, Mr. President, and we don\u2019t understand why you say that nothing can be done about this. This is the greatest country on earth. These particular jobs, the flexibility we need cannot happen in the United States.” And this New York Times story spells it out. As I say, they leave out one crucial factor here and that\u2019s unions, to help explain why manufacturing in America can\u2019t compete with the way the ChiComs do it. <\/p>\n
They could fill 3,000 new jobs a day, based on applications. By contrast, there are 50 US cities with 230,000 people. Adults. There are 83 US cities with a total population of 230,000. There are 50 US cities with an adult population of over 230,000. Here is a factory, and that\u2019s just one of Foxconn\u2019s factories. Now, one example is cited of what can be done in China that can\u2019t happen in America. They also talk about they were able to fill 8,700 engineer openings — not assembly line workers, but engineering jobs — in 15 days. It is said in the story it would take a US company, with all the legal hurdles and everything, nine months to find that many. Now, let\u2019s go to the iPhone.<\/p>\n
Something like two months before the iPhone had been announced and the release date had been announced, and everybody couldn\u2019t wait for the iPhone, Steve Jobs discovered a huge flaw. He had the phone in his pocket with his keys, and after a while, the plastic that was the screen got scratched repeatedly because of his keys. He pulled it out of his pocket, he showed his design team, and said, “I\u2019m not taking this to market. I don\u2019t care. If you can\u2019t fix this in five weeks or four weeks, we\u2019re pushing back the release date. Can\u2019t do it. You get it done. I want a new screen. I want a non-scratchable screen on this phone in six weeks.”<\/p>\n
The first thing Jobs did… He had heard about something that Corning had invented called Gorilla Glass. So he went to the Corning CEO. The Corning CEO said, “Oh, yeah, we\u2019ve got Gorilla Glass. We designed it. That\u2019s 30-year-old technology. We don\u2019t make it; we\u2019re not geared up for it.” Jobs said, “Don\u2019t be afraid. You can do it.” Gorilla Glass came into existence, the Corning people did it. The ChiComs at Foxconn were able, in six weeks, to redesign and remanufacture millions of iPhones with this new screen that had been demanded six weeks prior. The environmental studies necessary for this kind of change would have taken years in America, plus the other obstacles. There simply isn\u2019t, and never has been, a factory in this country that could produce this.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re gonna produce something like 50 million iPads this year. The number of iPhones is almost twice that. They sell these things worldwide — and that\u2019s just one factory of 230,000 employees. Sixty thousand of these people live and work at the factory. “Many of the people at ‘Foxconn City\u2019 work six days a week, twelve hours a day, and they earn less than US$17 per day. It may sound inhumane by American standards, but these jobs are in high demand in China — so much so that Jennifer Rigoni, former worldwide supply demand manager for Apple, told the New York Times that Foxconn ‘could hire 3,000 people overnight.'” That\u2019s how many people want to work there. “Those are just a couple examples of how the scale, speed, and efficiency…”<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another aspect of this. All of the parts that go into an iPhone are made within 25 miles of the factory that assembles them. So if Apple wanted to, they\u2019d have to ship all the parts either by air or by boat across the Pacific Ocean. It makes no economic sense to do it any other way that they\u2019re doing it, and they got hold of some Apple executives for this story, and one Apple executive (who\u2019s not identified) said, “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don\u00c2\u2019t have an obligation to solve America\u00c2\u2019s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” And they found out how to do it, and found out how to do it the cheapest and most efficient way. Really, it\u2019s a fascinating piece. The one thing that is not mentioned in this whole story is unions.<\/p>\n
Of course there aren\u2019t any in China. You couldn\u2019t get any of this done in modern-day America. So all the clamor for manufacturing jobs and why evil American companies leave: The systems, the ecosystems, the supply chain, it just doesn\u2019t exist. Nor does the labor price, obviously. But it is a fascinating thing. In World War II we used to do it. Yeah, in World War II we used to build things. We built the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the Empire State Building in the same five years. You know that? In the Depression. In the Depression, in the thirties. What we did in World War II, the world has never seen in terms of manufacturing, output of major, big, large things. There\u2019s no question.<\/p>\n
Here it is. The Foxconn “central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day.” To feed these people, three tons of pork, 13 tons of rice a day! This factory\u2019s in Shenzhen, by the way, but there are Foxconn factories all over the place. What US company could find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms to work 12 hours a day, six days a week? Here\u2019s another thing: “Apple\u00c2\u2019s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones.” You need some engineers watching this. “The company\u00c2\u2019s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days.” And that\u2019s how they were able to get the iPhone out on time.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Now, look, I know some of you were shouting at the radio. I know. They had a problem. In 2010, a number of Foxconn employees committed suicide at work to protest poor working conditions and low pay. It\u2019s not a panacea. I don\u2019t mean to say that that\u2019s nirvana over there. In fact, after the suicides, managers at the Foxconn factories “ordered staff to sign pledges that they wouldn\u2019t commit suicide anymore.” No, they did — and then they said, if you do commit suicide, your families will only seek the legal minimum in damages.<\/p>\n
They had to sign that. Promise you won\u2019t commit suicide, and if you do, you only get the legal minimum and that\u2019s it. They made \u2019em sign that. Now, the point of this is this just wouldn\u2019t happen here. It couldn\u2019t happen here. iPhones aren\u2019t made in America \u2019cause they can\u2019t be. The infrastructure, the labor force doesn\u2019t exist at the levels necessary to support Apple\u2019s operations or the demand. It just can\u2019t happen, not the way things are currently structured in America. These circumstances I described: 60,000 living at the factory, within a block? Not gonna happen here. Hence jobs Americans won\u2019t do anymore.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: By the way, that Apple story, that iPhone story in the New York Times, that is an attempt by the New York Times, that\u2019s an attack on Apple. I want you to understand, I shoulda said that at the outset. That 14-page story is an attack on Apple. Let me give you a quote from early in the piece by a guy named Jared Bernstein, who, until last year, was an economic adviser to the White House. He said, “Apple\u00c2\u2019s an example of why it\u00c2\u2019s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the US now. If it\u00c2\u2019s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.” Apple is an example of why we can\u2019t create middle-class jobs. So here\u2019s Steve Jobs, Apple, big Obama supporter, here comes the regime going after Apple for not making iPhones in America, gets the New York Times on the case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: The New York Times over the weekend had a story about why Apple\u2019s products are assembled in China. Why aren\u2019t they made in America. Apple has something like 43,000 employees in America, not counting the retail employees, 43,000 employees at their headquarters in Cupertino. It\u2019s a long piece that prints out to 14 pages. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n