
Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China - duykhoa12t
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/252743-microsoft-closes-us-surface-factory-moves-production-china
======
rayiner
> Microsoft’s decision to shift Surface Hub manufacturing to China highlights
> the difficulty in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
> It’s not just a question of opening a factory and hiring employees. There
> are supply line considerations, source costs, and the simple fact that
> American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees
> than they used to require in the 1970s, thanks to automation and improved
> productivity.

Like with climate change, it's already too late.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yep. Also,

> American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees

PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it
has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting.

[https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-
manufacturing-...](https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-
manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs/)

~~~
StillBored
Which is apparent to anyone who doesn't have their heads stuck in some
spreadsheets. Huge American manufacturing sectors (textiles, electronics, home
appliances, etc) which were made in this country 30-40 years ago are no longer
made here, or are made here in significantly reduced capacity.

So, its possible to talk about how efficient American manufacturing has
become, but the average consumer doesn't see that as they walk the isles at
Walmart. What they see is that its really hard to find anything actually made
in the US. Those of us old enough to remember, _CAN_ remember a time when the
clothing at the store said "made in America", or shed a little tear as we
remove the 25 year old washer that has a made in america sticker and replace
it with one that says made in Mexico or similar.

So, we may be making more planes and john deere tractors, but we definitely
have had huge swaths of our consumer goods simply wiped out by cheap labor
countries where hiring a half dozen people for 10 years to do final
inspections on clothing costs less than putting a robot in a factory in the
US.

The problem isn't that factory automation has been on a steady trend of
reducing labor since Henry Ford. The problem is that now that those factories
are located in cheap labor countries, they are still being slowly automated.
So eventually when they reach 100% and the labor costs are strictly the cost
of people programming and repairing the machines (see semiconductor fabs) they
aren't magically going to move back to the US, rather they will stay in
whatever part of the world managed to hold onto them during the final phases
and still has the critical mass of supply chain.

~~~
greglindahl
Almost all of the high-value parts of an iPhone are made in the US. Yet there
is a lot of hand-wringing about the low-value, labor-intensive work done on
iPhones in China.

~~~
azurezyq
Screen&flash- South Korea, CPU - TSMC(Taiwan), frames - China.

Which high value part are you talking about is made in us?

~~~
winthrowe
The software, I would presume. The Snow Crash quote "America makes movies,
music, and microcode" has never seemed more true.

~~~
pjmlp
I would bet Apple uses offshoring development sites like any corporation on
the same league.

~~~
ams6110
Not sure I make the same bet. Generally you don't outsource your core
competencies. Design and software are Apple's core competencies. Assembling
hardware is not.

~~~
pjmlp
You might be surprised how many core competencies are done by the major
consulting firms.

------
kylec
This article is dated July 20, 2017

~~~
greglindahl
... and the title is wrong, it's about Surface Hub and not Surface (tablets
and laptop)

~~~
maklu
The date is correct. This is an older article.

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luma
It isn't mentioned in the article, but I think it would be reasonable to
suggest that a 25% tariff on nearly every component that goes into these
devices might have impacted the decision. The alternative is to manufacture
the device outside of the US and then importing the completed device with no
tariff applied.

Trump's economic policies are doing the exact thing everyone suggested they
would, forcing modern manufacturing in the US to move elsewhere or face a 25%
increase in component cost across the board.

~~~
mmrezaie
It is so sadly funny that the strongest economy in the world can be
manipulated so deeply this fast and nothing happens. This makes me want to
read more about the Mongols, Romans, and Persians history. This must be a
great time to do analytical research on how to measure manipulation of the
mainstream opinions about well anything. I like to see some good simulators on
the matter. Maybe gaming industry can help!

~~~
eksemplar
There is a lot of historical data on it already. Also in markets much more
similar to modern markets, but it’s important to keep in mind that things are
different depending on the period.

Today the most valuable parts of a country isn’t raw materials or factories,
but know-how, and know-how is a lot more mobile than any other resource.

Romans faced a different threat, in that their biggest resource was the
materials and the factories, and because of that, they didn’t want one region
to have access to all of it. So they made their weapons in a different place
than their food source.

I don’t think protectionism or nationalism has ever really worked though. You
mention the Roman Empire, but it thrived the most when it was the most
inclusive, tolerating every region and culture as long as they all paid their
taxes on time and accepted everyone else. One of the key reasons the Roman
Empire originally was so tough on Christianity and Judaism was because the
monotheisms didn’t accept others.

I think it’ll be alright though, America has been through worse than Trump and
the alt-right.

------
nailer
The documentary The Thirteenth mentions Microsoft (among many other companies)
US uses prison labour - which allows the company to pay workers a pittance
which is viewed as being a type of exploitation. After this was exposed, a few
similar companies (Victoria's Secret) stopped doing this. Has Microsoft?

~~~
nailer
Reference: [https://www.gamespot.com/forums/offtopic-
discussion-31415927...](https://www.gamespot.com/forums/offtopic-
discussion-314159273/microsoft-and-nintendo-exploit-us-prison-labor-31964583/)

