All of the excitement surrounding Huawei is starting to spill over to Apple and it is drawing commentary from Foxconn’s founder of all people. Foxconn, for those that might not keep up with the Cupertino powerhouse’s supply chain, basically manufactures the vast majority of iPhones and tablets.
Set to retire on July 1st of this year, founder Terry Gou made his comments in the wake of a proposed tariff by the Trump administration of some 25% on a range of electronic devices made in China.
Of course, Apple has requested an exemption from this tariff as The Verge reports but it isn’t a guarantee that it will happen and that’s not excluding something from happening on down the road which also impacts Apple’s ability to produce iPhones in China.
The idea that Apple should move iPhone production out of China isn’t a new one though this is the first time anyone has proposed Taiwan as a manufacturing location. Interestingly, in the eyes of the People’s Republic of China, moving production to Taiwan wouldn’t be moving production out of China…technically.
The proposed locations for moving production that have gotten the most spin in the press are Vietnam and Indonesia though Malaysia and Mexico are also in the running apparently. Apple and Foxconn, for their part, aren’t terribly caught off guard by these developments.
The Verge reports that a study was commissioned some time back about what it would take to move some production out of China and Foxconn exec Young Liu has claimed in the past that the company has enough production capacity outside of China to produce iPhones for the US market. Naturally, the hope is that cooler heads will prevail during this prolonged trade spat and that none of the worst case scenarios will come to pass.
As always, we’d love to know your thoughts on the trade dispute raging between the US and China. You can leave them in the comments section below. You can also brush up on the Huawei saga by clicking here.
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