WJR: Kevin Ketels on Apple pulling production out of China
Assistant professor of teaching in global supply chain management at Wayne State University Kevin Ketels discusses the acceleration of Apple’s plans to shift some of its production outside China, which has long been the company’s dominant country in the supply chain. About 85% of iPhones are built and assembled in China. The pandemic, civil unrest and COVID authoritarian rule have revealed that consolidating manufacturing centers for American companies in the volatile country is now becoming more risky and less sustainable. Apple is rethinking its strategy after worker protests related to China’s zero-COVID policies. “We’ve seen police beating workers at Foxconn’s facility in China, which is the world’s biggest site making Apple smartphones…” Ketels said. “Now Apple says ‘we need more facilities and places to avoid supply chain nightmares.’ In the past, people didn’t worry too much about product coming from one location to another. Free trade seemed pretty normal and predictable, but we have entered a whole new world, and Apple is waking up to that…”
