> Because the supply chain for electronics manufacturing, and many other classes of products, is hard to replicate.
Software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen says. So who controls the software -- including by controlling the hardware the software runs on -- controls the world.
This means that every polity that wants to be truly independent needs to control its computing infrastructure, ideally all the layers of the technology stack from chips to social media. So it would be well worth polities such as the USA or EU putting up whatever level of import tariffs (and other measures) it takes to encourage manufacturers to do these things domestically.
Not that doing so would be that much more expensive anyway. The cost of low-level assembly line labour per iPhone is probably only a few dollars. I'd guess that building them in the USA would only add $10-20 to the cost.
Atoms still matter, and there are blue-collar manufacturing skills the US has lost to China, and most of the low-cost labor alternative locales never had in the first place.
Software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen says. So who controls the software -- including by controlling the hardware the software runs on -- controls the world.
This means that every polity that wants to be truly independent needs to control its computing infrastructure, ideally all the layers of the technology stack from chips to social media. So it would be well worth polities such as the USA or EU putting up whatever level of import tariffs (and other measures) it takes to encourage manufacturers to do these things domestically.
Not that doing so would be that much more expensive anyway. The cost of low-level assembly line labour per iPhone is probably only a few dollars. I'd guess that building them in the USA would only add $10-20 to the cost.