In politics, the people love to have slogans because almost everyone can read into the slogan whatever they wish to. In this fashion, people buy into the slogan and the world can move on with some emphasis to the slogan. In the case of President Trump, one of his slogans is more manufacturing in the US. It is hard to find someone who disagrees with the slogan. How you go about it, there is much disagreement.

In an article by John Turley-Ewart an opinion writer with the Globe and Mail, he explains what conditions are present in the China and why in 90 days or whatever short time period President Trump has, very little manufacturing is likely to come back to the US.

Mr. Turley-Ewart uses information from a book called Apple in China by Patrick McGee. For the past 25 years, Apple and China have a relationship. Apple provided billions of dollars of know-how, China ensured stability of government which invested in education to provide an expanding managerial and engineering class atop of a scalable, just-in-time, low wage, low-skilled, low-rights 300 million plus floating work force that moves as needed from factory to factory. (If you think of migrant workers harvesting crops, moving to the next field to harvest, then you have an idea of the workforce in China’s manufacturing sector).

In 1999, Apple did not produce its products in China. A decade later it was making almost everything there. Since 2008, Apple has trained 28 million people in China’s factories.

Apple has invested about $55 billion annually by 2015. This supplied the capital and expertise needed to train managers and engineers to establish and run factories and complex tooling companies which encouraging raw material extraction and refining essential to feeding the just-in-time high-tech supply chain Apple products rely on to generate $90 billion in annual profits.

Apple is now moving some of its manufacturing to India which has similar conditions as China in regards to people in the country moving to the cities for regular higher paying jobs than the subsistence in the countryside.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often times these are the ones that benefited from the global supply systems that have been set up. Each part has evolved for a particular reason and it would be very hard to duplicate in the home country, not with standing the slogans of the politicians.

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