> Can we still manufacture electronics here, even if we wanted to? I thought all the expertise and machinery was outsourced a long time ago?
Yes. There's a bunch of industries that either can't or don't bother manufacturing in China. The majority of the military industrial complex and much of the biotech/medical equipment industry, among many others. The former for natsec reasons and the latter because even after 20 years QC is still a shitshow.
The problem is how spread out the industrial capacity is. In Shenzhen you can walk from the factory to a giant bazaar with every electronic part you could think of available to buy then and there in reel quantities. You can walk to any of hundreds of other factories and talk to the people on the floor to help design parts for their process. When the part is ready, they can courier it over to you within an hour.
The cost of labor doesn't help either but at Apple scale, US companies would figure it out.
Biotech/medtech is only a shitshow because it's typically small run. If the manufacturers actually committed resource they could achieve any outcome they desire. They are just passing the buck. (Source: Lived in Shenzhen for ages, had US friends managing the manufacturing of US medical devices, visited multiple times large factories producing biomed parts)
Yes. There's a bunch of industries that either can't or don't bother manufacturing in China. The majority of the military industrial complex and much of the biotech/medical equipment industry, among many others. The former for natsec reasons and the latter because even after 20 years QC is still a shitshow.
The problem is how spread out the industrial capacity is. In Shenzhen you can walk from the factory to a giant bazaar with every electronic part you could think of available to buy then and there in reel quantities. You can walk to any of hundreds of other factories and talk to the people on the floor to help design parts for their process. When the part is ready, they can courier it over to you within an hour.
The cost of labor doesn't help either but at Apple scale, US companies would figure it out.