Dispatches from the Empire

iPhone factories unlikely in US despite Trump’s opinion

Beyond the cost implications for Apple, domestically manufacturing iPhones would likely lead to substantial price increases for stateside buyers. It’s either the tariffs or the domestic manufacturing costs; pick one. American citizens don’t, by and large for now, want to work for peanuts in factories, with all the surrounding pollution, and the factories would need to be built, too, all of which costs money. Cheap foreigners could be drafted in, yet the current White House regime is happily fostering a heightened hostile environment for migrants. Automation could be maximized, which means fewer jobs are created and requires specialists and research.

Manufacturers could absorb these costs, and reduce their profit margins, and upset investors and retirement portfolios. There are ways forward, with various pros and cons; it’s just nowhere near as trivial as the Trump administration is portraying it. Tariffs are a rather blunt approach to what needs coordination between private and public sectors, long-term training and investment, and political nous.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives estimated this week that a Chinese-made iPhone currently priced at $1,000 could balloon to $3,500 if manufactured in the US. Meanwhile, an April 3 analysis from Rosenblatt Securities warned that tariffs alone could drive the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max 1TB — currently $1,599 — up to nearly $2,300. And that’s before the US-China trade war escalation went into warp.

Our uneducated populace is to blame for much of this mess. We Americans do not understand economics. We don’t know the difference between price and cost, we simply want to work less (yet for more money) so that we can buy ever-more inexpensive things.

That’s not possible without the very consequences we seem to be angry about.

How to fix it? I don’t know. I get the distinct feeling that it’s somewhat inevitable if American citizens aren’t willing to adjust their expectations. (Not something we’re known for.)

‘Liberation Day’ Was Even Worse Than Expected

Like a game show host, Trump announced a series of tariff rates on many of America’s major trading partners.

How did he come up with the rates?

It seems by a crude formula: A given nation’s trade deficit with the U.S. divided by that nation’s exports to the U.S.

Trump calls these “reciprocal tariffs,” and the claim is that we are taxing foreign nations at only half the rate they are taxing our imports. The numbers are illusory, however, some of them apparently made up (Brazil at only ten percent?) and others counting a VAT as a net tax on American imports, which it is not.

What timeline are we living in?

This is perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime. I cannot think of any credentialed economist colleague—Democrat, Republican, or independent—who would endorse it. And I haven’t even mentioned the risk that some foreign nations will retaliate against American exporters, damaging our economy all the more.

The last two months have felt like all the chickens of the last 40 years have come home to roost. Since I became politically aware, I’ve had the lingering suspicion that we would be the ones to bring about our own decline, all because we prioritize money above all else. Americans wanted cheap stuff so badly that we outsourced our own jobs to other countries. Think about that.

Plainly, China is ascendent and America will not be great again. The country of my grandparents’ mythologizing — the country I want to believe in — is gone.