
Some new iMacs marked as being 'Assembled in USA' - Quekster
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/02/some-new-imacs-marked-as-being-assembled-in-america
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Samuel_Michon
From the article:

 _"Besides built-to-order machines, the 21.5-inch iMacs are some of the first
known examples of an Apple computer being assembled in the U.S., according to
Fortune."_

That's incorrect. For more than ten years, all Apple computers used to be
assembled in the US of A [0].

[http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/apple-foxconn-
strategy-...](http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/apple-foxconn-
strategy-1.htm)

[0] Except perhaps for Apple Is sold outside of the US, as customers were
expected to assemble that model themselves.

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prezjordan
I wonder if assembling these in the US would win over many critical consumers
and actually turn Apple a profit. Has this ever been done with another
company? What sort of industry is this possible?

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Evbn
Don't know what Apple is doing, but it is common for firms to manufacture
goods overseas, then put a small finishing touch in the US to get a
Made/Assembled in USA label for PR or tax purposes.

~~~
ams6110
The article states that "screwdriver" or other non-transformative assembly of
foreign components does not qualify. There must be a substantive
transformation of the parts to qualify as "assembly"

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chimeracoder
Victoria's Secret used to (still does?) make their products in Honduras and
then send the essentially-finished garments to the US, where inmates in
private prisons sew on "Made in USA" labels. Because the "Made in USA" labels
are sewn on, that counts as the final step in the assembly process, even
though _literally_ nothing but the "Made in USA" tag is even made in the USA.

~~~
pash
Almost certainly an urban legend.

Federal law requires that products labeled as "Made in the USA" be "all or
virtually all" made in the United States. The Federal Trade Commission's
guidelines [0] make clear that sewing a "Made in the USA" tag on a foreign-
made article of clothing would violate that requirement.

0\. [http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus03-complying-made-
usa-s...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus03-complying-made-usa-standard)

~~~
sk5t
However, note that Northern Marianas produces products with the "Made in the
USA" label, despite not being in, near, or part of the USA, and having a
history of terrible labor practices and corruption.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands#Econom...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands#Economy)

~~~
pash
The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is an unincorporated
territory of the United States, and its citizens are US citizens. (And I used
to live there, as it happens.) Its relationship with the US is similar to
Puerto Rico's.

Accordingly, products made in the CNMI may be labeled as "Made in USA"
(subject to the same rules I cited above). But after the labor scandals of the
1990s, many well known clothing brands that kept their factories there
switched to labels like "Made in Northern Marianas, USA".

Since 2009, the CNMI no longer makes its own immigration policy. [0] The
islands are now subject to federal immigration law, and all provisions of the
Immigration and Naturalization Act will be in effect there from 2014. By that
date, the CNMI's workforce will be governed by the same laws as elsewhere in
the United States and there will no longer be any real basis for controversy
over its "Made in USA" labeling.

0\. [http://www.dhs.gov/commonwealth-northern-mariana-islands-
tra...](http://www.dhs.gov/commonwealth-northern-mariana-islands-transition-
us-immigration-law)

~~~
joe_the_user
I visit Saipan last spring (home to 90% of the population) and it was rather
sad. All the factories were closed, tourism was petering out and there were
shopping centers being recaptured by the jungle.

The Northern end of Island is spectacularly beautiful and Japanese tourists
still would visit there. In the whole of the Micronesia area, Asian tourists
outnumber Americans by something like 20 to 1 and the US seems increasingly
irrelevant even on the Islands it owns. Interesting.

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muhfuhkuh
Wasn't it Steve Jobs himself who said to President Obama at a dinner that
"those jobs aren't coming back" when talking about high-tech manufacturing?

I've been reading about other technology companies besides Apple doing this as
well. Element and Vizio, two value-tier (think Wal-Mart and Target) flat-
screen TV manufacturers have major assembly plants here in the states. They
cited a combo of labor, shipping and duty being cost-ineffective at their
price levels to make and ship from China.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Those are actually not contradictory.

Apparently, it's cost effective to assemble products in the US that
incorporate large LCD screens. Apple was already assembling BTO iMacs in the
US, and now some standard iMacs as well.

iPhones, iPods, and iPads are a different story, as they're a lot smaller. An
airplane can fit a _lot_ more boxed 9.7" iPads than it can fit boxed 21.5"
iMacs – 28 times, to be exact (I just did the math.)

As for Steve Jobs' remarks, it seems he wasn't talking about iMacs but about
iPads, iPhones and iPods:

 _"As Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own:
What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Not long ago, Apple
boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of
the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple
sold last year were manufactured overseas. Why can't that work come home?
Obama asked. Jobs' reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he
said, according to another dinner guest."_

[http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239...](http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239999)

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arrrg
Even “those jobs aren’t coming back” is a somewhat polite and euphemistic
answer. Those jobs were never even in the USA in the first place. The USA
could never support making phones and tablets on the scale on which they are
made in China.

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ck2
Oh come on, this is pure lies.

There is zero enforcement or oversight for this, they cannot even sue
Monsanto, how could government stop this.

What if it's assembled by machines in a US territory with a handful of people
working at below minimum wage? They can still label it "assembled in the usa".

