Steve Jobs vs. Howard Lutnick on making iPhone
It's a wonder people like Lutnick is tasked to bring manufacturing back to the US and run the economy
One of the funnier episodes after Trump’s tariff war with China was when his Commerce Secretary, the sycophant Howard Lutnick who made his fortune at some Wall Street brokerage, went on TV to talk about the beautiful future to be ushered in – “"The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones -- that kind of thing is going to come to America."
This reminds me of an episode in Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs and his view on making iPhone in the US.
Back in 2011 President Obama had dinner with a bunch of Silicon Valley bosses in California. Over dinner he asked Jobs, “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?”
The famously blunt Apple boss didn’t mince words. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he replied.
The reason wasn’t just lower costs in China. The New York Time reported, “Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of Chinese factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of the workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”
To illustrate, NYT offered a story shared by a former Apple executive about a last-minute design change to the iPhone’s screen that forced a change in the manufacturing process at the Chinese factory where the phones were being made.
Around midnight, 8,000 workers were assembled and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into bevelled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing more than 10,000 iPhones a day with the latest design change.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive told NYT. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
Tim Cook, the supply chain boss at Apple before becoming the CEO, said this about tooling engineers – “in America, you can barely fill a room with tooling engineers. In China, you can fill several football fields”.
You have to also believe in unicorns if you believe some brokerage (or real estate) billionaire will help bring manufacturing back to the US when the engineers are saying the polar opposite.
The same Lutnick also recently says the 'new model' for America is factory jobs for life—for you, your kids, and your grandkids, according to Fortune.
Good luck, America. You’ll need it.
That same Lutnick missed dying with his colleagues in the WTC collapse because that day he drove his son to school.
America has a secret weapon, our black engineers will kick China's slant-eyed ass. You don't have a chance against these intellectual giants. We will Wakandaize the world!!!!