If you own a piece of land to build a house on it, you will quickly determine to build takes time. It takes a while before all the moving parts to make the house function like a home happens. It is no different with the supply system.

In an article by Meaghan Tobin and John Liu of the New York Times News Service, US President Trump talked about implementing tariffs on day 1 or short afterwards. If you are a company, you need to take that seriously and had to start planning long before.

Foxconn has been preparing for this possibility for years. Foxconn produces a significant share of the world’s consumer electronics at its factories in central China. For decades it has produced the iPhones for Apple and it says makes half of all computer servers that power artificial intelligence or AI systems.

Foxconn has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on land and equipment to make iPhones in Bangalore and Tamil Nadu in India. It makes AI severs in Jalisco in Mexico. It received $300 million from Thailand to make parts and equipment for computer chip business. Foxconn paid $33 million for 10-acre tract north of Houston.

Just because Foxconn makes an investment does not mean success. Two examples are an announcement in 2011 in Brazil for an expected 100,000 jobs has produced 3,000 jobs. Plans for Indonesia $1 billion investment fell through. In the US, a $10 billion investment in Wisconsin has produced empty land and a few warehouse buildings but infrastructure was paid by the state.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, diversification takes time and preplanning, if the companies you invest in are in process, then there will be a time delay when governments make announcements.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.