Why manufacturing won't return to the U.S. - former CEO Motorola

[ronnie50]

U.S. manufacturer Motorola tried 'Made in USA' some years back with one of its cell phones. But a year after opening a factory in Texas, making 100,000 phones a week, the company realized it was unsustainable and shut it down. CNN report, picked up by other agencies: https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/tried-building-smartphones-us-over-080042927.html 

 

Former CEO of Motorola explains why.

[SunnyinBangrak]

It IS returning. Not sure what CNN are smoking to ignore all the returning manufacturing, but then that is the same network that breathlessly trumpeted the Trump Russia collusion hoax 24/7 for years and when the penny finally dropped they just quietly moved on to the next hoax. 

 

If you want to better inform yourself 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-manufacturing-domestic-tariffs/

[mogandave]

CNN having to write about manufacturing under the Obama Administration in a feeble attempt to diminish some of the Trump Admonition’s successes. 

 

Pathetic.

[Tug]

1 minute ago, mogandave said:

CNN having to write about manufacturing under the Obama Administration in a feeble attempt to diminish some of the Trump Admonition’s successes. 

 

Pathetic.

What success?all we have reaped so far is an extra tax by trump by decree.so what tangible success?

[mogandave]

5 minutes ago, Tug said:

What success?all we have reaped so far is an extra tax by trump by decree.so what tangible success?

Investments in domestic manufacturing.

[Tug]

3 minutes ago, mogandave said:

Investments in domestic manufacturing.

Where’s the money?I’ve heard word’s only.don’t be bambozzled by his rhetoric with trump factual proof otherwise it’s just talk.

[mogandave]

3 minutes ago, Tug said:

Where’s the money?I’ve heard word’s only.don’t be bambozzled by his rhetoric with trump factual proof otherwise it’s just talk.

So you think that Tim Cook and all the other corporate leaders that have made investment commitments publicly are all liars. 

 

[mogandave]

18 minutes ago, Tug said:

What success?all we have reaped so far is an extra tax by trump by decree.so what tangible success?

What extra tax?

[blaze master]

57 minutes ago, mogandave said:

1 hour ago, Tug said:

Where’s the money?I’ve heard word’s only.don’t be bambozzled by his rhetoric with trump factual proof otherwise it’s just talk.

So you think that Tim Cook and all the other corporate leaders that have made investment commitments publicly are all liars

 

Big lie.....

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/companies/2025/08/07/apple-investment-in-us-corning-glass-production-kentucky/85556405007/

[mogandave]

3 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Big lie.....

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/companies/2025/08/07/apple-investment-in-us-corning-glass-production-kentucky/85556405007/

What is a big lie?

[blaze master]

20 minutes ago, mogandave said:

What is a big lie?

 

Exposing the other poster. 

[mogandave]

4 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Exposing the other poster. 

The left always has to resort to lies and deception. 

 

And they seem to think they are brilliant and everyone else is stupid. 

 

They love taxes on the citizenry. and do not seem to give a cr*p about prices until you start talking about the illegal aliens they love or tariffs on goods from the countries they worship, like China.

[Gsxrnz]

Sadly, the story is basically correct.  Not just for the US, but for the entire Western world.  We've spent 50+ years exporting jobs, skills and knowledge to China, S.E Asia and India.  That sounds fixable - just build a new factory in Texas and make the stuff there. Employ locals, sell to America.

 

Yeah, it don't work like that.  Because we've also decimated our internal infrastructure - everything from an educated (and willing) labour force, the entire supply and logistics chain (especially sea vessels), not to mention the severe lack of capital or willing investors available to do so.

 

Try to raise capital to build a billion dollar factory in Florida to make an identical factory in China redundant. The laws of risk/reward and supply and demand dictate that this can only happen over a very extended period of time, and at a very slow pace - somewhat similar to the pace at which we allowed China to but fark us.

 

However, to counter my theory there is one possible reason to justify the spend - China's population is forecast to drop circa 50% in the next 75 years and they don't have any immigration. So they won't have anybody to punch a timecard by 2100. The US on the other hand has a reasonable birth rate due to rampant immigration. If it was only a numbers game, the US is winning on that score. However the US and entire Western population are ageing and as this continues, general demand for consumer products will decline.

 

No doubt there are a host of actuaries, statisticians and accountants doing the long-term math on this entire problem. How long is a piece of string? 

 

 

[mogandave]

In 2000 when I began manufacturing in Thailand, direct labor ran about 1.5%.

 

At that time, producing the same product in California, using more efficient equipment, direct labor ran about 11% 

 

When I retired about six years ago, direct labor in Thailand was running about 4%, while in California, it was down to about 9%. 

 

The higher percentage in Thailand was primarily do to increased wages, and lower overhead. 

 

Wages in California also went up, but went down as a percentage primarily due to the increased cost of compliance.

[Tug]

2 hours ago, mogandave said:

So you think that Tim Cook and all the other corporate leaders that have made investment commitments publicly are all liars. 

 

No I think they are trying to survive the trump chaos let me know when it’s actually happened.

2 hours ago, mogandave said:

What extra tax?

Don’t be a dolt his tariffs ye now have to pay

[Tug]

54 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Exposing the other poster. 

Proof not noise.

[mogandave]

2 minutes ago, Tug said:

No I think they are trying to survive the trump chaos let me know when it’s actually happened.

So they are all lying because of Trump?

2 minutes ago, Tug said:

Don’t be a dolt his tariffs ye now have to pay

The lower taxes I will pay as a result of the Trump tax cuts being made permanent will far exceed what little extra I might pay for Chinese cr*p. 

 

And most working Americans are already saving more on gas than they will ever pay in tariffs. 

[mogandave]

8 minutes ago, Tug said:

Proof not noise.

From the guy that never has any proof. 

 

How is paying higher corporate income taxes different from charging tariffs? Do they not both drive up prices?

[blaze master]

32 minutes ago, Tug said:

Proof not noise.

 

Stop it. 

[CallumWK]

3 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Stop it. 

 

Why? You can't handle the truth any more?

My prediction is that shortly after mid term elections, maybe even before, most of these MAGA members will suddenly disappear from the forum,.

[blaze master]

12 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

 

Why? You can't handle the truth any more?

My prediction is that shortly after mid term elections, maybe even before, most of these MAGA members will suddenly disappear from the forum,.

 

Are you really this obtuse ? Apple have made a statement you are calling them liars ?

 

How strange.

 

And if your prediction is wrong will you publicly state it ? Or will you react like most on the left dis after the kamala debacle.? Kind of like the poster in question did.  Scattered for a long time only to slither back k into the forum like nothing happened

 

 

I wont hold my breath for you to publicly admit you were wrong.

[fondue zoo]

 

Public forums are fun aren't they.

[MicroB]

Looks like everyone attacked the messenger. Probably didn't bother reading the article.

 

The article was an interview with Dennis Woodside, former CEO of Motorola Mobility, until parent Google sold it to Lenovo.

 

The article realates to market research commiss ioned by the company that suggested Motorola could grab significant share in the US against Apple and Samsung, with a "Made in USA". Within a year, they had to shut down their Texas factory, producing the then flagship Moto X phone, and shift production overseas.

 

Woodside claims the issue Motorola faced in Texas was a combination of a skills shortage in the area, plus an inability to retain employees, diluting the experience within the company. The Fort Worth factory was intended to be an assembly line, taking subcomponants sourced overseas, but offering customisation of product more suited to a US customer base than the imported Apple and Samsung one size fits all model. Poor sales and a long supply chain meant the phone was not profitable. Sales were one fifth to one tenth of where they needed to be for break even. Customers, it turned out, did not value "Made in USA" that highly, put that above technical features, price performance etc.

 

Notably, Woodside noted that Motorola faced competition for employees in the service industries; food and retail. He also noted that the device being assembled had a large number of very small components, that US workers found difficult to deal with.

 

The article cites conservative think tank, the Cato Institute (I remember it being conservative because PJ O'Rourke was with them)

 

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-08/Globalization Survey_2024.pdf

 

The summer 2024 survey quoted:

 

 

Which seems to support the suppostion that its generally very challenging in the US to recruit people into an industry that largely demands hand assembly (the intricate parts in a phone).

 

US Labor Dept stats in 2023 suggested 12.5-12.7million workers in US manufacturing.

 

The article contrasts manufacturing labour shortages in the US with a surplus of manufacturing labour in China. The CSIS is quoted, a think tank described as bipartisan, but rates by some sources as "lean left", pointing out that vocational training strategy in the US is something left to the State level, whereas China makes vocational training a national priority, and this enables the development of a workforce at scale (my observation is that in the US, states are set up to compete against each other, rather than competing against the world, a hangover from a past industrial age that is no longer true).

 

Some respondants challenge this article, by cherry picked examples, adopting a Corbynista approach (he had a magic money tree, they have a magic skills tree). They are deliberately spreading a false agenda to support false news.

 

Every year, since the US was founded, companies have created factories, companies have shuttered factories. Layoffs are as part of the industrial landscape as recruitment.

 

Lets go through the cited examples.

 

Abbott; Abbott Labs, a company that profited from the COVID pandemic in selling knowingly inaccurate COVID tests, will create 300 jobs in manufacturing and R&D at two plants, as part of a $500m investment. There will be 100 new jobs in Texas and 200 in Illinois. This is part of an expansion of their US transfusion business. Between 2020 and 2025, the company (according to their transcript and filings) an average of $1 billion each year into US manufacturing and $2 billion in R&D (mostly M&A and cashing in on COVID), so once you get away from the headline, it looks like they have cut investment in the US massively. The good news is they are creating some new jobs, but I doubt any of this is to do with tariffs, and its more to do with the commoditization of their previous big money earner, the CGMs that people are sticking on their arms; these are mostly made overseas. Commodization of diabetes products means products now are competing purely on price. Globally, Abbott employs 149,000 people. Each year, the company on average creates about 1700 new jobs.

 

Apple; Apple had previously said they were investing $500m over the next 4 years. This was announced months before the tariffs, but to be fair, they were likely anticipating these. Apple are several times over much bigger than Abbott. The last time Apple announced one of these US investment deals was in early 2021, then it was $430 billion over the next 4-5 years. On the face of it, adjusting for inflation, investment is flat. the take away is that while tariffs are not necessarily encouraging Apple to invest more in US manufacturing, they don't seem, yet, enough to dissuade such investment.

 

The Corning deal is a continuation of a deal first announced in early 2024. Its pretty normal. It would have happened, tariffs or no tariffs, as Apple builds a long term strategic relationship with Corning.

 

Chobani; scraping the barrel here. Greek yoghurt manufacture, $1.2 billion for 1000 jobs. Seems making the money for making milk products  goes further, in jobs creation, than advanced medical devices and cutting edge AI servers. Or course, the US isn't really importing much yoghurt from anywhere. Its a $12 billion market in the US. About  $100m in yoghurt virtually all from France and Canada is imported, so a miniscule part of the market. Not a tariff success story, once you take the leftist CBS report apart.

 

Cra-Z-Art; This is a regional chain of arts and crafts store, turnover about $25m a year. This increase in its US manufacturing capacity by 50% is part of a programme of investment that started in 2021, during the Biden years as it happened, but I'm sure nothing to do with that President. The CEO is claiming the latest move is tariffs drivem expanding sq footage of manufacturing from 1 million to 1.5 million sq feet. The company is the largest  manufacturer of pencils, which I'm sure is a double digit growing market. While the company had increased US capacity, at the same same time, this US capacity is utterly dwarfed by its expansion of non-US manufacturing, through the acquisition of Swiss company, Joker AG, which has substantive Chinese and Hong Kong facilities. I see a company hedging its bets.

 

Johnson & Johnson; $55bn into US manufacturing over the next 4 years, up 25% compared to the previous 4 years. Inflation adjusted, a decent increase in investment. But lets not forget they have offered $6.5 bn in compensation for their cancer causing talc, probably will need to increase that. This is part of a multu year investment programme that started in 2017, so its a policy not really driven by tariffs but by tax policy for obvious reasons. Tariffs are going to cost them $400m this year. The CEO noted that the 2017 tax policies have been a far more effective driver of investment than tariffs are. Now,  China is a net importer of US medical products, the tariffs war has resulted in JnJ losing out in China, not the US.

 

Honda. Its shifting production from Japan to Indiana. Currently their Civic Hybrid model is produced in both countries. The company wouldn't divulge why except that "the company's policy since its foundation that we produce cars where the demand is". However, company spokesmen claimed its nothing to do with tariffs. Honda saw a 59% profit decline, with Japan sales tanking. In fact, other CIvics have not been sold in Japan since 2010. Its not a very popular model there.

 

Hyundai;

 

Now is the time to reflect how far Hyundai has come. It started making knock offs of Jeeps from scrap metal. By the 1970s, it was bringing over British Leyland engineers in an effort to basically make the Hyundai Pony into a Morris Marina. Now Americans are begging it to give them jobs. The thrust of their investment is $21bn over the next 3 years, doubling their total US investment. A major part of that is to build a furnace in Lousiana, which the the company describes as giving them the ability to recycle the scrap metal that is abundant in the US (a bit harsh to describe Fords and Chevrolets), as part of their strategy of total domination of the US market (so creating jobs in  order for someone else to lose theirs). Who would have thought; it wasn't so long ago that Hyundais were regarded as the crappest machines on the road (Hyundai Accent? Steller, which was a rebodied old Cortina). The main difference between a Ford being driven out of the market and Hyundai taking over, is that Ford profits stay in America. Hyundai profits go to Seoul.

 

IBM. Didn't know they were still about. But is it s a big investment of $150bn, mostly in Quantum computing. Probably not huge number of jobs, and many, ironically, will be H1bs. I'd say this is driven by Project Stargate, which is where the US government said it was going to support a consortium of American-Arab banks build new infrastructure to support a massive AI project, which is essentially data harvesting on a gargantuan scale (if they actually get it to work), which will make the Chinese government's efforts to digitize and effectively monitor their citizens, look tifling. Still, its what people wanted. As part of this, the FDA is seeking Congessional authority to access all medical records. Apparently, they say, they need this data to test medical device apps for "accuracy" and are assuring you they won't use the data for anything else. I'm actually in favour of this, essentially establishing a national whole genome database, that can be used by doctors for the purposes of allowing would be parents to have informed choices, right through to determining what sort of job bests suits you, to looking at how the end for you will be, and what you can do about that.

 

 

Merck; Big Pharma Merck (Jib jabs etc) is using $1bn to build a plant to make the cancer immunotherapy, Keytruda, for the US market. Keytruda blocks PD-L1, the latest miracle biomarker. For this drug, they have taken a mouse antibody, and mutated it to resemble a human antibody, then they inject this into you. To get this drug, you have to undergo testing with the Dako test, not any other test, otherwise, you can't be reimbused. A year's treatment costs $150k. The story here is that after 10 years, Keytruda's  patents are about to expire, and if will face off-patent, and cheaper, alternatives. The tariffs might have, partly, driven this move, but its not good news for the patient. They'll still be paying $150k as long as Merck can get away with it. The $1bn shores up profits for the shareholders, before drug armagaddon.

 

NVIDIA; for the first time ever, making chips and super computers in the US. This is the only significant story of the lot. But what you are seeing with AI will NOT be US or Chinese or anyone dominating the space. Because of data leaks, expect the raising of electronic borders. Keeping your data is critical. Its bad for competition, because there won't be any. Expect the rise of mega corporations that have fingers in everyone's lives. A Bladerunner type future, wuth the Tyrell Corporation running everything, including your virtual sex doll. "The engines of the world's AI infrastructure" is false; that infrastructure won't be hosting Chinese data, European data, African data.AI with American data will be fairly useless for Chinese and Japanese markets and vice versa. What will free us from this upcoming tyranny is someone who can render electronic firewalls obsolete. This will be the negative consequences of the Novecene until the machines take over.

 

Roche; a big deal. Butone thing to note, with these Pharma deals, a lot depends on the FDA's ability to regulate. Its not just like building a new car factory. So Roche has issued a veiled threat, "the totality of our $50-billion investment is dependent on the current policy environment in the US and will be reassessed if legislation or regulations were implemented that would harm our industry's ability to operate and innovate in America". This is a heavy hint that it wants the President to make it easier for drugs and vaccines to be approved. This is in stark difference with a general feeling that, for instance, COVID-19 vaccines have undergone insufficient testing, before, according to some, being forced on the US population, perhaps causing uncessary injury and death. From a jobs point of view, Roche already has 25,000 US employees and 13 US manufacturing sites. The $50bn is a big number, but is expected to add 400 jobs to the US.

 

TSMC; Asian . Like NVIDIA, TSMC is doing a superb job of cupping the balls of the US, and stroking its shaft.. TSMC is said to be doing this, because by saying it will build some kind of US presence, it will get complete exemption on all imported chips. Like Roche, though, this company is warning the US government; any more changes in policy, and it will pull its Arizona investment "New import restrictions could jeopardize current U.S. leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the U.S., including TSMC Arizona's significant investment plan in Phoenix"

 

From WARNTracker

 

 

 

 

 

[sharot724]

7 hours ago, SunnyinBangrak said:

It IS returning. Not sure what CNN are smoking to ignore all the returning manufacturing, but then that is the same network that breathlessly trumpeted the Trump Russia collusion hoax 24/7 for years and when the penny finally dropped they just quietly moved on to the next hoax. 

 

If you want to better inform yourself 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-manufacturing-domestic-tariffs/

"The broader statistical evidence points to negative net employment effects" of tariffs, analysts with the investment bank said in an April 13 report.

 

[spidermike007]

2 hours ago, MicroB said:

Looks like everyone attacked the messenger. Probably didn't bother reading the article.

 

The article was an interview with Dennis Woodside, former CEO of Motorola Mobility, until parent Google sold it to Lenovo.

 

The article realates to market research commiss ioned by the company that suggested Motorola could grab significant share in the US against Apple and Samsung, with a "Made in USA". Within a year, they had to shut down their Texas factory, producing the then flagship Moto X phone, and shift production overseas.

 

Woodside claims the issue Motorola faced in Texas was a combination of a skills shortage in the area, plus an inability to retain employees, diluting the experience within the company. The Fort Worth factory was intended to be an assembly line, taking subcomponants sourced overseas, but offering customisation of product more suited to a US customer base than the imported Apple and Samsung one size fits all model. Poor sales and a long supply chain meant the phone was not profitable. Sales were one fifth to one tenth of where they needed to be for break even. Customers, it turned out, did not value "Made in USA" that highly, put that above technical features, price performance etc.

 

Notably, Woodside noted that Motorola faced competition for employees in the service industries; food and retail. He also noted that the device being assembled had a large number of very small components, that US workers found difficult to deal with.

 

The article cites conservative think tank, the Cato Institute (I remember it being conservative because PJ O'Rourke was with them)

 

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-08/Globalization Survey_2024.pdf

 

The summer 2024 survey quoted:

 

 

Which seems to support the suppostion that its generally very challenging in the US to recruit people into an industry that largely demands hand assembly (the intricate parts in a phone).

 

US Labor Dept stats in 2023 suggested 12.5-12.7million workers in US manufacturing.

 

The article contrasts manufacturing labour shortages in the US with a surplus of manufacturing labour in China. The CSIS is quoted, a think tank described as bipartisan, but rates by some sources as "lean left", pointing out that vocational training strategy in the US is something left to the State level, whereas China makes vocational training a national priority, and this enables the development of a workforce at scale (my observation is that in the US, states are set up to compete against each other, rather than competing against the world, a hangover from a past industrial age that is no longer true).

 

Some respondants challenge this article, by cherry picked examples, adopting a Corbynista approach (he had a magic money tree, they have a magic skills tree). They are deliberately spreading a false agenda to support false news.

 

Every year, since the US was founded, companies have created factories, companies have shuttered factories. Layoffs are as part of the industrial landscape as recruitment.

 

Lets go through the cited examples.

 

Abbott; Abbott Labs, a company that profited from the COVID pandemic in selling knowingly inaccurate COVID tests, will create 300 jobs in manufacturing and R&D at two plants, as part of a $500m investment. There will be 100 new jobs in Texas and 200 in Illinois. This is part of an expansion of their US transfusion business. Between 2020 and 2025, the company (according to their transcript and filings) an average of $1 billion each year into US manufacturing and $2 billion in R&D (mostly M&A and cashing in on COVID), so once you get away from the headline, it looks like they have cut investment in the US massively. The good news is they are creating some new jobs, but I doubt any of this is to do with tariffs, and its more to do with the commoditization of their previous big money earner, the CGMs that people are sticking on their arms; these are mostly made overseas. Commodization of diabetes products means products now are competing purely on price. Globally, Abbott employs 149,000 people. Each year, the company on average creates about 1700 new jobs.

 

Apple; Apple had previously said they were investing $500m over the next 4 years. This was announced months before the tariffs, but to be fair, they were likely anticipating these. Apple are several times over much bigger than Abbott. The last time Apple announced one of these US investment deals was in early 2021, then it was $430 billion over the next 4-5 years. On the face of it, adjusting for inflation, investment is flat. the take away is that while tariffs are not necessarily encouraging Apple to invest more in US manufacturing, they don't seem, yet, enough to dissuade such investment.

 

The Corning deal is a continuation of a deal first announced in early 2024. Its pretty normal. It would have happened, tariffs or no tariffs, as Apple builds a long term strategic relationship with Corning.

 

Chobani; scraping the barrel here. Greek yoghurt manufacture, $1.2 billion for 1000 jobs. Seems making the money for making milk products  goes further, in jobs creation, than advanced medical devices and cutting edge AI servers. Or course, the US isn't really importing much yoghurt from anywhere. Its a $12 billion market in the US. About  $100m in yoghurt virtually all from France and Canada is imported, so a miniscule part of the market. Not a tariff success story, once you take the leftist CBS report apart.

 

Cra-Z-Art; This is a regional chain of arts and crafts store, turnover about $25m a year. This increase in its US manufacturing capacity by 50% is part of a programme of investment that started in 2021, during the Biden years as it happened, but I'm sure nothing to do with that President. The CEO is claiming the latest move is tariffs drivem expanding sq footage of manufacturing from 1 million to 1.5 million sq feet. The company is the largest  manufacturer of pencils, which I'm sure is a double digit growing market. While the company had increased US capacity, at the same same time, this US capacity is utterly dwarfed by its expansion of non-US manufacturing, through the acquisition of Swiss company, Joker AG, which has substantive Chinese and Hong Kong facilities. I see a company hedging its bets.

 

Johnson & Johnson; $55bn into US manufacturing over the next 4 years, up 25% compared to the previous 4 years. Inflation adjusted, a decent increase in investment. But lets not forget they have offered $6.5 bn in compensation for their cancer causing talc, probably will need to increase that. This is part of a multu year investment programme that started in 2017, so its a policy not really driven by tariffs but by tax policy for obvious reasons. Tariffs are going to cost them $400m this year. The CEO noted that the 2017 tax policies have been a far more effective driver of investment than tariffs are. Now,  China is a net importer of US medical products, the tariffs war has resulted in JnJ losing out in China, not the US.

 

Honda. Its shifting production from Japan to Indiana. Currently their Civic Hybrid model is produced in both countries. The company wouldn't divulge why except that "the company's policy since its foundation that we produce cars where the demand is". However, company spokesmen claimed its nothing to do with tariffs. Honda saw a 59% profit decline, with Japan sales tanking. In fact, other CIvics have not been sold in Japan since 2010. Its not a very popular model there.

 

Hyundai;

 

Now is the time to reflect how far Hyundai has come. It started making knock offs of Jeeps from scrap metal. By the 1970s, it was bringing over British Leyland engineers in an effort to basically make the Hyundai Pony into a Morris Marina. Now Americans are begging it to give them jobs. The thrust of their investment is $21bn over the next 3 years, doubling their total US investment. A major part of that is to build a furnace in Lousiana, which the the company describes as giving them the ability to recycle the scrap metal that is abundant in the US (a bit harsh to describe Fords and Chevrolets), as part of their strategy of total domination of the US market (so creating jobs in  order for someone else to lose theirs). Who would have thought; it wasn't so long ago that Hyundais were regarded as the crappest machines on the road (Hyundai Accent? Steller, which was a rebodied old Cortina). The main difference between a Ford being driven out of the market and Hyundai taking over, is that Ford profits stay in America. Hyundai profits go to Seoul.

 

IBM. Didn't know they were still about. But is it s a big investment of $150bn, mostly in Quantum computing. Probably not huge number of jobs, and many, ironically, will be H1bs. I'd say this is driven by Project Stargate, which is where the US government said it was going to support a consortium of American-Arab banks build new infrastructure to support a massive AI project, which is essentially data harvesting on a gargantuan scale (if they actually get it to work), which will make the Chinese government's efforts to digitize and effectively monitor their citizens, look tifling. Still, its what people wanted. As part of this, the FDA is seeking Congessional authority to access all medical records. Apparently, they say, they need this data to test medical device apps for "accuracy" and are assuring you they won't use the data for anything else. I'm actually in favour of this, essentially establishing a national whole genome database, that can be used by doctors for the purposes of allowing would be parents to have informed choices, right through to determining what sort of job bests suits you, to looking at how the end for you will be, and what you can do about that.

 

 

Merck; Big Pharma Merck (Jib jabs etc) is using $1bn to build a plant to make the cancer immunotherapy, Keytruda, for the US market. Keytruda blocks PD-L1, the latest miracle biomarker. For this drug, they have taken a mouse antibody, and mutated it to resemble a human antibody, then they inject this into you. To get this drug, you have to undergo testing with the Dako test, not any other test, otherwise, you can't be reimbused. A year's treatment costs $150k. The story here is that after 10 years, Keytruda's  patents are about to expire, and if will face off-patent, and cheaper, alternatives. The tariffs might have, partly, driven this move, but its not good news for the patient. They'll still be paying $150k as long as Merck can get away with it. The $1bn shores up profits for the shareholders, before drug armagaddon.

 

NVIDIA; for the first time ever, making chips and super computers in the US. This is the only significant story of the lot. But what you are seeing with AI will NOT be US or Chinese or anyone dominating the space. Because of data leaks, expect the raising of electronic borders. Keeping your data is critical. Its bad for competition, because there won't be any. Expect the rise of mega corporations that have fingers in everyone's lives. A Bladerunner type future, wuth the Tyrell Corporation running everything, including your virtual sex doll. "The engines of the world's AI infrastructure" is false; that infrastructure won't be hosting Chinese data, European data, African data.AI with American data will be fairly useless for Chinese and Japanese markets and vice versa. What will free us from this upcoming tyranny is someone who can render electronic firewalls obsolete. This will be the negative consequences of the Novecene until the machines take over.

 

Roche; a big deal. Butone thing to note, with these Pharma deals, a lot depends on the FDA's ability to regulate. Its not just like building a new car factory. So Roche has issued a veiled threat, "the totality of our $50-billion investment is dependent on the current policy environment in the US and will be reassessed if legislation or regulations were implemented that would harm our industry's ability to operate and innovate in America". This is a heavy hint that it wants the President to make it easier for drugs and vaccines to be approved. This is in stark difference with a general feeling that, for instance, COVID-19 vaccines have undergone insufficient testing, before, according to some, being forced on the US population, perhaps causing uncessary injury and death. From a jobs point of view, Roche already has 25,000 US employees and 13 US manufacturing sites. The $50bn is a big number, but is expected to add 400 jobs to the US.

 

TSMC; Asian . Like NVIDIA, TSMC is doing a superb job of cupping the balls of the US, and stroking its shaft.. TSMC is said to be doing this, because by saying it will build some kind of US presence, it will get complete exemption on all imported chips. Like Roche, though, this company is warning the US government; any more changes in policy, and it will pull its Arizona investment "New import restrictions could jeopardize current U.S. leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the U.S., including TSMC Arizona's significant investment plan in Phoenix"

 

From WARNTracker

 

 

 

 

 

Great summary. And a voice of reason in the wilderness of Trump inspired delusion. 

 

 

[spidermike007]

It’s a total mess. As the Ford Motor chief executive Jim Farley courageously (compared to other chief executives) pointed out, “Let’s be real honest: Long term, a 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canada borders would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”

 

So, either Trump wants to blow that hole, or he’s bluffing, or he is clueless. If it is the latter, Trump is going to get a crash course in the hard realities of the global economy as it really is — not how he imagines it.

 

Ecosystems? Listen a bit to Beinhocker, who is also the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. In the real world, he argues, “There is no such thing as the American economy anymore that you can identify in any real, tangible way. There’s just this accounting fiction that we call U.S. G.D.P.” To be sure, he says, “There are American interests in the economy. There are American workers. There are American consumers. There are firms based in America. But there is no American economy in that isolated sense.”

 

The old days, he added, “where you made wine and I made cheese, and you had everything you needed to make wine and I had everything I needed to make cheese and so we traded with each other — which made us both better off, as Adam Smith taught — those days are long gone.” Except in Trump’s head.

 

Instead, there is a global web of commercial, manufacturing, services and trading “ecosystems,” explains Beinhocker. “There is an automobile ecosystem. There’s an A.I. ecosystem. There’s a smartphone ecosystem. There’s a drug development ecosystem. There is the chip-making ecosystem.” And the people, parts and knowledge that make up those ecosystems all move back and forth across many economies.

 

As NPR noted in a recent story about the auto industry, “carmakers have built a vast, complicated supply chain that spans North America, with parts crossing back and forth across borders throughout the auto manufacturing process. … Some parts cross borders multiple times — like, say, a wire that is manufactured in the U.S., sent to Mexico to be bundled into a group of wires, and then back to the U.S. for installation into a bigger piece of a car, like a seat.”

 

Trump just waves off all of this. He told reporters that the U.S. is not reliant on Canada. “We don’t need them to make our cars,” he said.

 

Actually, we do. And thank goodness for that. It not only enables us to make cars cheaper, but also better. All that a Model T did was get you from point to point faster than a horse, but today’s cars offer you heating and cooling and entertainment from the internet and satellites. They will navigate for you and even drive for you — and they’re much safer. When we can combine more complex knowledge and complex parts to solve complex problems, our quality of life soars.

 

But here’s the catch. You cannot make complex stuff alone anymore. It’s too complex. And if you are not part of these ecosystems, your country will not thrive.”

 

And trust is the essential ingredient that makes these ecosystems work and grow, Beinhocker adds. Trust acts as both glue and grease. It glues together bonds of cooperation, while at the same time it greases the flows of people, products, capital and ideas from one country to the next. Remove trust and the ecosystems start to collapse.

 

Trust, though, is built by good rules and healthy relationships, and Trump is trampling on both. The result: If he goes down this road, Trump will make America and the world poorer. Mr. President, do your homework.

 

1. Imposing massive tariffs on nations worldwide, and ignoring the fact that the US became the world's largest economy specifically because of very low tariffs. Duh! 

2. Insulting and alienating close allies and friends. 

3. Demonizing opposing political parties. 

4. Taking advice from unhinged extremists, who know nothing about anything, because you think they are cute. 

5. Siding with dictators who are genocidal and untrustworthy, and making them the exception to the tariffs. 

6. Spending as much time as possible on the golf courses.

7. Threatening sovereign nations with a takeover.

8. Appointing neopytes with no experience and no management skills to head massive departments. 

9. Pretending it is all a big success. 

 

 

 

 

[bunnydrops]

Trump, Foxcomm and Wisconsin.

A funny story--

 

[mogandave]

Oh, and Ford’s up over 17% YTD and they pay about 6% in dividends….

[mogandave]

1 minute ago, bunnydrops said:

Trump, Foxcomm and Wisconsin.

A funny story--

 

What was funny about it?

[gargamon]

8 hours ago, mogandave said:

So you think that Tim Cook and all the other corporate leaders that have made investment commitments publicly are all liars. 

 

Yes. Cook got out of Apple's tarrifs and the manufacturing commitment by giving the Orange Buffoon a trinket in the oval office. At least it was a shiny trinket.