Go on amazon and see for yourself how cheap laptops are. You can buy one for $300. Now net out the money Lenovo or Dell have to pay American firms for their silicon and other components, you end up with maybe $10 profit margin. How is that not low margin?
Whether something is important has no relationship to whether it’s high or low value add. Water is important. Grains are important. Doesn’t mean they are high value add products.
Those $300 laptops are only possible when firms can mass produce and sell $2000 corporate laptops. but thats not the point. your not even understanding it. as you define importance by price only.
This $300 will become $1000 laptop if manufactured in US as US is not global exporters.
for Kids who will be doing home schooling. they better have business laptop that are far sturdier and spill resistant. its one thing to have laptop for entertianment but quite another to use it continously for 10 hours for multi year schooling with screen blackout or too much heat. we are entering new era.
My kid uses a $350 chromebook with a touchscreen. Surprisingly well built.
$300 laptop won’t cost $1k if they assemble them here. They may become $350. But the margin is so thin that added labor cost would eat up the entirety of Lenovo’s profit, and then some.
US market too small by itself to built these things at cheaper prices. After Coronoa. Health insurance and cost of living will explode.
“It is still just China expanding display capacity at the expense of other countries,” says Ross Young, the CEO at Display Supply Chain Consultants. “We get rumors of potential projects in India from time to time, but they haven’t panned out yet.”
The multi-billion dollar cost of building an FPD facility is almost as daunting as that for a state-of-the-art semiconductor plant.
Building a new FPD manufacturing facility costs one to four billion dollars depending on the size of the display, motherglass, and technology.
“There is so little margin in building TV-sized liquid crystal displays that virtually all manufacturing is migrating from South Korea to China, and LG Display’s new AM-OLED factory has just begun volume manufacturing in Guangzhou, China,” says Kenneth Werner, principal with Nutmeg Consultants.
There’s little hope for a Foxconn FPD plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin that President Donald Trump once said would be the “eighth wonder of the world”.
“Foxconn was going to build a Gen 10.5 fab in Racine County, Wisconsin,” says Werner. “That was always a strange idea and is not going anywhere.”
No one will build those things in the US because they are commodities that can be built in any 3rd world country. Even China’s labor costs is getting too high in the coastal region and Foxconn has set up some huge assembly plant in the Chinese hinterlands. They are also building assembly plant in India and Brazil. All you need is just some warm bodies to do the grunt work. Similarly Samsung is moving most of their phones in Vietnam nowadays.
Vietnam is just assembling. Its not independent from supply chain.
China is still the key for mass production as they have big export markets in EuroAsiaMiddlaest.
We have no alternative to laptops on the scale and price needed.
No firm will be invest in US untill it has surety about labor competence, Price and export markets.
where Chinese massive investments in Railway make it far ahead from small Asian countries.
Chinese can dictate currencies and get European investments and technology better. which will get harder and harder for small countries in Asia as Europe goes its own ways.
How?
Accounting 101. If China exports to the US, they have to take USD, which is a piece of paper issued by the US government.
Only country that has sizable reserves in RMB is Russia. About time Huawei takes advantage of that and make some chips in Putin’s secret fabs.
China can take Euros. Thats why i put statement before Corona virus from Germany. They are preparing for it. Once Industrial supply chains sufficiently de couple than it will be China dictating it.
First it was Chinese sending Volvos to Europe. now its Europe version of Fedex.
The size of US market is gettting smaller and smaller for both Chinese and European exporters.
Europe has no problem getting latest laptops from China.
US only pays USD for imports. Unless China doesn’t export to the US, they have to take USD. It’s that simple.
The discussion has gone OT. Allow me to chip in since I have woken up by the debate and the one 
that matter has gone up another $10 AH.
As time progress, more nations should get more developed and approach that of US. Unless Trump or any future POTUS can sabotage other nations, it should happen. The world has 7.8 billion people while US has about 330 million (too lazy to check the latest). So the relative size of US economy vs world economy should asymptotic to 330/7800 - don’t ask me take how long, I have no crystal ball - May not be in my lifetime - I have no clue but should be so unless US is able to sabotage - only delay not stop the eventuality.
So US as a market should diminish in size relative to the world market. Hence, it no longer makes sense to keep so much (in percentage term) greenbacks as reserve, and shouldn’t trade with each other in greenbacks.
Remember my context is future, not now or immediate future. Governments are strategic planners, not short-sighted like us.
What I said can easily be verified by examine foreign revenue of American MNCS through time, as a percentage is always growing.
Do Chinese care that 5 million laptops are not sold to US?. who is complaining?
Do Chinese care that latest Iphone is delayed?(I am sure they will either use cheaper disposable components or extract $200 to $300 extra for 5G variants). there skill labor and contact manufacturer will moved on to serve other customers.
It is UK refuse to recognize digital tax as issue between two countries. but referring to it as international partners. think harder you will get the answer. loose monetary policies in USD are enabling other countries to built alternative R&D, Infrastructure, supply chains at scale never done before.
Actually “more” could be a very small number increase. If you compare the number of advanced economies back in the 1930s to today, the advanced industrial nations are almost exactly the same. You have the top dog United States. And then Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The only new ones are the four little dragons: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. That’s it. Four in the span of 100 years.
That’s why people talk about the middle income trap. Many nations just got snared in the trap and never move up the rank. Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, on and on.
largest provider of tech talent to US is India both onshore and offshore. Infact Indian CEOs are running IBM, Microsoft, Google etc.
Indians are in tech billionairs and millionaires. if virtual tech is the criteria.
If industrial tech is criteria. than Germany alone produce far more than US.
Korea and Japan neither as they need EU to finish there factories and virtual tech is much smaller.
I suggest you check the GDP per capita number of India first. How’s that compared to the US?
India will move very little in the relative ranking over the next 50 years. The weak institutions that held it back for the last 50 years will still be in place. So result would be the same.
The idea that all poor countries will one day catch up to the US is just false. Look at the data.
it does not matter what poor do in the country.
It is who produce the most tech people and who control the tech supply chains. India far out produce US in this segment and Indian will dominate in Job market in Silicon valley as futher decoupling from Europe and China continues.
Indian Americans are already highest paid community in US and this trend will expand further.
If India is so great the Indians you mentioned will dominate from back in India. They won’t need to move to SV first.
The people are great. The institutions let them down.
I wouldn’t throw the poor people off board so casually like you did. They deserve better.
I have no idea of how long it would take.
Those academics? Trying to extrapolate a trend too far into the future. Events don’t develop linearly. Allow me to display TSLA chart,
Btw…
Intellectual flexibility 
Replace price with GDP or whatever metric you want for measuring economy growth. I just want to illustrate non-linearity, TSLA chart come to mind.
I thought you are all about contexts? We are taking about long term developmental economics and you throw in a stock chart?
That’s why I said before it’s hard for many people to predict the past, let alone the future.
Look back at history and try to fit your theories there. Why only four economies broke through in the last 100 years? What are the differences between Malaysia and Singapore for example? Why one broke through but the other never seems to catch a break?
If conditions stay the same, results will be the same.
It does not matter what India per capita or infrastructure as whole.
what matter is US is now wholly depended on India as US will be facing Currency / Tech wars with Europe/Russia/China.
Palo Alto schools wont matter when Big Silicon valley virtual tech firms can throw billions and train millions in India. and Indian stock market create trillions. Everything is virtual anyway.
The word Global is thrown around everywhere.
I am still waiting for your solution to fight climate fires in California?. otherwise the exodus will further accelerate.
