Apple Plans to Move Production Outside of China

CensorBiz Бізнес, Новини, Статті, Суспільство 0 Comment

The Wall Street Journal reports U.S. smartphone giant Apple Inc. is accelerating plans to move some China-based production lines to other southeastern Asian countries such as India and Vietnam.

That, analysts said, would represent a significant shift in the so-called de-Sinification of global supply chains after manufacturers become aware of risks of concentrating production in China.

China’s zero-COVID policy, which paralyzed some of its supply chains, and its deteriorating business environment would be the major trigger behind the shift, they added.

India: the world’s next factory?

“China’s anti-virus measures have forced many multinationals, including Apple, to hedge against the risk of disrupted supply chains. Though China is set to ease COVID restrictions, uncertainty remains because these multinationals have had experienced much sudden change of policy there – reasons behind Apple’s accelerated relocation of its production lines outward,” Darson Chiu, a research fellow of the economic forecasting center under the Institute of Economic Research (TIER) in Taipei, told VOA over the phone.

He said that many companies, including Apple, have seen the potential in India in competing with China to be “the world’s next factory,” adding that cost of labor and land is “at one-fifth of the level in China.”

“This highlights an evolving trend, where many companies, not just Apple, are concerned about the environment in China, and not just because of COVID. When we look at theft of intellectual property, that’s of technology, cyber-attacks on companies inside China, the onerous restrictions that apply from Chinese government to data flows, there are a number of factors that are making China a much less attractive environment for manufacturers to be,” Stephen Ezell, director of global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington told VOA by video.

“And I think it’s possible that Apple represents the tip of the spear for a much greater share of global high-tech production moving outside of China,” he added.

A domino effect?

Ezell said more multinationals might follow suit if Apple succeeds in shipping products from India, as it had produced a small percentage of iPhone 14s there.

Citing people involved in the discussion, The Wall Street Journal reported on December 6 that Apple had asked its suppliers to plan more actively for assembling its products elsewhere in Asia, “particularly India and Vietnam,” to reduce dependence on China-based assemblers, led by Taiwan-headquartered Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant. 

Turmoil over anti-virus measures and wage disputes last month among the plant’s 300,000 workers have made Apple uncomfortable having so much business tied up in the plant, which made about 85% of the iPhone’s pro series, according to the report.

It added that Apple’s long-term goal is to ship 40% to 45% of iPhones from India, compared with a current single-digit percentage, citing Ming-chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities in Hong Kong.

When asked by VOA, Foxconn refused to comment. But the company Thursday announced on its WeChat account that it has lifted closed-loop Covid restrictions at its Zhengzhou plant.

Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China, and technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, told VOA that Apple has already done some manufacturing with Foxconn in India, which plans to add 50,000 workers to total at 70,000 there over the next two years.

He warned, though, that it will be hard for Foxconn to duplicate its highly optimized China supply chain in India, where skilled workers and infrastructure including airports, ports and high-speed rail, as well as an ecosystem of component suppliers at a low cost, are lacking.

Painful transition

“India has some advantages … it does tend to crank out a lot of engineers but you’re talking about a sort of different cultural issues and expectations and labor practices, and all these things. So it’s not as easy as just picking up something and dropping it into another country. You have to learn the local situation. You have to work with local governments. That can be painful,” Triolo told VOA by video.

He added that, even though companies like Foxconn are good at managing production, the cost structures will be different in India.

Hence, he noted that some of Apple’s diversification of supply chains may happen inside China, as Foxconn is reportedly looking to expand at its Taiyuan plant in China’s northern Shanxi province.

The biggest challenge of all lies in India’s ability to strengthen its depth of supplier base for Apple at an optimal cost, Ezell said.

“The production ecosystem, that’s what’s the key driver in decreasing the cost, not just low labor costs. So, the challenge for India is going to be several folds. One, building a localized base of suppliers that can support production at lower cost. And then more broadly, ensuring that India does have the highly skilled trained workforce and individuals that had experience and building what are truly very complex electronics with iPads or phones,” Ezell said.

Negative impact on China’s jobless rate

Arthur Guo, a senior analyst at the market intelligence firm International Data Corp in Beijing, said he would not be surprised to see Apple diversify the production of its iPhone 15 next year after the lockdown at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant has seriously affected the supply of the iPhone 14.

That will hurr China’s economic growth and unemployment rate, Guo said in a written reply to VOA.

“However, this relocating process will last for a period and will not be implemented immediately. In the future, we believe China still will be an important production country for Apple and will find a better solution to this problem,” Guo added.

Earlier estimates by TF’s Kuo showed that the total shipment of iPhone 14 pro and pro max in the fourth quarter would be 15 million to 20 million units less than expected due to labor protests at the Zhengzhou plant.
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Viktor Bout, Arms Dealer in Prisoner Swap, Remembered as ‘Monster’

PolitCens Новини, Політика, Суспільство 0 Comment

Viktor Bout, the former Russian military officer convicted of illegal arms trafficking in U.S. courts in 2012, and who was serving a 25-year prison sentence, has had his sentence commuted and is being repatriated as part of a prisoner exchange that freed United States basketball star Brittney Griner from prison in Russia.

Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” started an air freight business in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which prosecutors alleged he used to transport military-grade weapons around the world, often supplying arms to combatants on opposing sides of the same conflicts.

In an indictment of Bout issued in February 2010, the U.S. Justice Department alleged, “Bout, an international weapons trafficker since the 1990s, has carried out a massive weapons-trafficking business by assembling a fleet of cargo airplanes capable of transporting weapons and military equipment to various parts of the world, including Africa, South America, and the Middle East. The arms that Bout has sold or brokered have fueled conflicts and supported regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Sudan.”

The Russian government has long claimed that Bout was wrongly convicted and unjustly imprisoned. He had, most recently, been held in a federal prison facility in the city of Marion in the U.S. state of Illinois.

Griner had spent 10 months in prison in Russia after being arrested at a Moscow airport with a small amount of cannabis oil in an electronic cigarette cartridge in her luggage. Sentenced to nine years in prison, she was recently transferred to a prison labor camp.

Early life

Little is known for certain about Bout’s early life, other than that he grew up in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and was conscripted into the Russian military at age 18. He is believed to be multilingual, and is thought to have studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. The institute has close ties to Russian intelligence services.

Bout appears to have left military service around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, and moved to the United Arab Emirates, where he purchased four Soviet-era Antonov-8 cargo planes and established an air freight firm called Air Cess.

Bout’s fleet of planes eventually numbered around 60, and much of his business was legitimate. According to Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, authors of the book Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible, Bout’s contracts included some with the U.S. government for ferrying reconstruction supplies into Afghanistan and some with the United Nations for delivering humanitarian aid.

Active in Africa

It was arms dealing, however, that made Bout both internationally famous and extremely wealthy. In the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, vast quantities of military weapons appeared on the black market, and prosecutors and journalists have produced evidence that Bout transported weapons to conflict zones around the globe, often to parties that were subject to international arms embargoes.

Bout was especially active in Africa, and in the 1990s is believed to have supplied arms to both the government of Angola and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) who were fighting against it.

Similarly, Bout is believed to have supplied arms to both sides of the civil war in what was then Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to have sold arms used in conflicts in Rwanda, Sudan, and Somalia.

Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia who was convicted of war crimes for his role in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, is also believed to have been one of Bout’s clients.

‘Truly a monster’

David M. Crane, the founding chief prosecutor of the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, saw the results of Bout’s arms dealing in West Africa up close.

“He was truly a monster in his own right,” Crane told VOA. “This is someone who spread his arms and ammunition around the world, in very dark corners of the world, causing pain and suffering wherever he went.”

Crane, who went on to found the non-profit Global Accountability Network, which seeks justice for the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, said that the destruction wrought in Sierra Leone by the forces Bout armed was extensive.

“He was the main supplier of arms and ammunition…to that terrible conflict in West Africa, which saw the murder, rape, maiming and mutilation of over 1.2 million human beings,” Chase said.

While Africa may have been Bout’s primary focus, he was also active in other parts of the world. For example, he is believed to have sold weapons and equipment to both the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance that opposed it in the late 1990s.

Captured

By the late 2000s, Bout was subject to multiple arrest warrants around the world, and rarely left Russia, where the government of Vladimir Putin refused to extradite him.

In 2008, however, he was lured to Bangkok, Thailand, for a meeting with people he believed to be representatives of Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, the rebel group that for decades sought to overthrow the Colombian government before a 2016 peace accord. FARC was, at the time, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

In fact, Bout was actually meeting with informants for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who recorded him offering to sell them hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and other heavy weaponry. In the conversation, Bout acknowledged that the missiles, in particular, were to be used to bring down U.S. planes flying drug interdiction missions.

Bout was arrested on the spot by Thai law enforcement, and two years later he was extradited to the U.S., where he was charged with several crimes, including breaking weapons embargoes, conspiring to kill U.S. officials, and various money laundering and wire fraud charges.

In 2012, Bout was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Long process

In a statement on Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry characterized the negotiations that led to Bout’s release as long, with the U.S. resisting demands that he be made part of the deal.

“Washington was categorically refusing to engage in dialogue on putting the Russian national on the exchange scheme,” the foreign ministry told the news outlet TASS. “Nevertheless, the Russian Federation continued to actively work towards the release of our fellow countryman.”

In remarks announcing Griner’s release Thursday morning, U.S. President Joe Biden did not mention Bout, but criticized Russia for holding the basketball star. He said that Griner “lost months of her life [and] experienced a needless trauma.”

 

Biden also referred to another high-profile American detainee in Russia, former Marine Paul Whelan, who has been held there for four years.

“We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home….Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”
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На деокупованій Миколаївщині виявили тіла трьох мирних жителів із слідами тортур – прокуратура

SocNet Новини, Політика, Суспільство 0 Comment

Українські правоохоронці періодично повідомляють про знайдені тіла людей, які загинули під час окупації територій російськими військами
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Стало відомо про нові знахідки в єпархіях УПЦ (МП) – перепустки «федеральних радників РФ» та прапори «ЛДНР»

SocNet Новини, Політика, Суспільство 0 Comment

За викритими фактами розпочато кримінальне провадження за статтею «державна зрада, вчинена в умовах воєнного стану»
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Democrats Secure 51-Seat Majority in US Senate With Georgia Runoff Win

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday that Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock’s runoff election win was an important boost for Democrats.

“The practical effects of the 51-seat majority — it’s big. It’s significant,” he said. “We can breathe a sigh of relief.” 

The Senate had stood for the past two years at a 50-50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote. But with Warnock winning re-election to his first full six-year term in office, Democrats have now gained a seat and secured a clear majority for the rest of President Joe Biden’s first term in office.

“After a hard-fought campaign, or should I say campaigns? It is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken,” Warnock told supporters at a victory party late Tuesday.

In the November election, both Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker failed to secure a 50% majority of the vote required in Georgia to win, leading to the runoff. As of midday Wednesday, Warnock led Walker by a little under three percentage points with 95% of votes counted.

In a concession speech in front of his supporters Tuesday, Walker said, “I don’t want any of you to stop dreaming. I don’t want any of you to stop believing in America. I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials. Most of all, continue to pray for them.”

Walker was one of multiple Senate candidates nationwide who were endorsed by former President Donald Trump but who lost their elections. During the campaign, Walker faced allegations he had paid for abortions and engaged in domestic abuse. His campaign accused Warnock of unfairly evicting tenants from properties he owns. Warnock ultimately won out in the runoff that saw record voter turnout.

Schumer told reporters that voters sent a clear message about Republican priorities, particularly in the wake of the June U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade, the court’s 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.

“The public began to realize how far right these MAGA Republicans had gone. The Dobbs decision was the crystallization of that. Of course, when people said, ‘Wow, these MAGA Republicans are serious about turning the dial all the way back,” he said.

Dobbs vs. Jackson was the case that led to the Supreme Court ruling.

Schumer would not discuss priorities for the new Congress but did acknowledge the clear majority gives Democrats a significant advantage in bringing their legislation and nominees up for votes.

“It’s important to the committee structure — that was a shared committee responsibility,” Amy Dacey, executive director of the Stein Institute of Policy and Politics at American University, told VOA. “Now you’ll have clear chairs who drive the calendar, drive what issues will come up in front of the Senate.”

The U.S. Congress, however, will be divided when lawmakers are sworn in for a new session in January, with Republicans holding a slim majority in the House of Representatives.

Some information provided by Reuters.
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Життя у фотографіях: пам’яті Івана Гватя, багаторічного співробітника Радіо Свобода

SocNet Новини, Політика, Суспільство 0 Comment

Іван Гвать народився 1950 року у селі Ряшеві у східній Словаччині в українській родині. Після закінчення Української гімназії у Пряшеві (ЧССР, 1968 р.), вивчав філософію, історію і філологію в університетах Урбаніана (Рим) та Людвіґ-Максиміліанеум (Мюнхен).
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