Party and State: Made in the USA: Why Tech Companies Are Looking West

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Made in the USA: Why Tech Companies Are Looking West

Once upon a time, China was known for being the factory of the world, producing goods that it's own people couldn't afford to buy. The economies of outsourcing to China were pretty obvious, lower wages and a large population looking to earn a low wage meant that production lines could be manned with substantial savings, especially for tech companies.

Apple, and Motorola (Google providing the OS for their phones) are all moving their production back to America for selected products, however. The Moto X, MacBook Pro and Thinkpad are all proudly boasting that they are now made in the USA.

Besides the fact that customers in the US prefer to buy things that are made in the US, and that Chinese made products tend to have things in them that poison people, shipping time constraints and rising wages (Chinese wages have increased 71% since 2008) are also being blamed for the new "look west" attitude of industry giants. The cost of assembling in China and shipping to the US will be the same as manufacturing the product entirely in the US by 2015. Media reports, no matter how untrue, criticizing the working conditions of those who work on the Apple production don't do much to sell iPod, either.

Apple had tried to make it's products a little more appealing to patriotic Americans by famously adding the "Designed by Apple in California" tag to it's products, but the Made in America, as the Japanese auto industry proved, might not be enough to shore up sales.