"Grown ass men with sausage fingers are also out there painting tiny dolls using nail art brushes so they can play house... with their friends," Jeong joked. "American men have plenty of manual dexterity."

OH, man. I feel attacked. I'm going to cry onto my D&D minis now.

"All the crap that fits, we print."

China ain't the cheapest anymore and has not been for a while.

That's the Washington Post.

That's the Washington Post

No, that's the Washington Post. The NYT did change ownership a few years ago and that's why it's gone to shit, but the owner isn't a household name.

hire

They've been known to literally lock people in their factories, and even put up suicide nets to prevent slaves from killing themselves.

What stood out for me was this line:

— so it could be, whether the NYT understood it or not, that its "experts" were simply winking at the reality that it's hard to build affordable gadgets in a country with robust labor rights.

Robust labour rights? An American is talking about "robust labor rights"!? If someone from the EU had written that I'd have gone "fair enough". But against an American employer?

Let's put it this way: I've worked in China for 25 years. I turned down a job in the USA shortly before moving here (about two years before). There's a reason for this (and it wasn't just the gun in the job interview).

That’s it. That’s the only reason.

Manufacturing labour costs are far cheaper outside of China but the skills aren't available. While labour costs are always a factor, the US just doesn't have enough skilled manufacturing engineers or the supply chain you get somewhere like Shenzen.

"Young Chinese women have small fingers," the article reads, "and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said."

This 100% reads like LLM output; it's confidently wrong, isn't using proper news copy syntax, and got weirdly vague as it trailed off ("the small device").

NYT is publishing AI articles.

Does anyone else remember this fake commercial from a real life movie with actual brand names in it?

Crazy People, Sony Commercial

What's important to note is all the pieces that get screwed together are still made over there...

We can pay tariffs on all the pieces and screw them together here, but that's going to essentially have the same tariff costs as a completed iPhone.

Having someone screw the pieces together here would also raise costs due to labor costs. But they're two completely different things.

Quick edit:

Times author is legitimately named "Trip" and started out as a sports writer before pivoting to "apple, bourbon, and beer".

These days it might just be AI, but if it's a human it's almost certainly a nepo hire...

Wasn't this also the argument for child labor? "Small children can fit into tight spaces easier, lets use them to unjam dangerous machinery"

Yep exactly!

Authors name is "Tripp" and if he's a real person he 100% used AI to write it.

I'm guessing his grandfather was/is loaded and connected. I've never met a man in my life who goes by "Tripp" and isn't an insufferable douche coasting off generational wealth.

The crazy part is he just "wrote" a book about Apple, and there's a good chance Apple execs he talked to really said that stupid racist thing.

Neither did China until Apple trained them

So, NYT, do the Swiss all have micro hands? How do you explain Swiss watchmaking? For that matter, how about American watchmaking? America used to make all kinds of tiny wristwatches, including movements. There is also a few current American watchmakers, with a few building intricate movements.

Well it's also about supply chains. All the components are also made in China so you'd end up ordering the parts and then having to wait a month or more for them to be shipped to the US. If you want to avoid delays that means maintaining a significant stockpile of parts in the US that you may or may not ever actually use.

They could even waive the tariffs and it would still be impractical to assemble in the US. The only way it's practical here is with near full automation, and even then it's probably still cheaper in China.

Labor and land are just so much cheaper there.

No, but it's substantially cheaper than the US and cheap enough that moving operations isn't practical. Companies are moving to other south Asian countries, but China remains a staple for reasonably competent and reasonably cheap labor.