How Apple undermined the US economy

I’ve always bought Ford and General Motors cars, partly because I wanted to support jobs for my fellow Americans.

As Abraham Lincoln reportedly put it, “When I buy a shirt from England, I get a shirt and England gets a dollar.  But when I buy a shirt from America, I get a shirt and America gets a dollar.”

At the same time, I’ve always bought Apple computer products, and, in so doing, I may have done more to undermine the U.S. economy than I did when I bought a Ford Escort or a GM Saturn.

I read an article yesterday on a blog called Moneyball Economics about how Apple offshored the American smartphone industry to South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China.

This is a big thing.  The writer, Andrew Zatlin, pointed out that the United States imported nearly $100 billion worth of smartphones each year, half of them Apple iPphones.  Smartphones are the third largest U.S. import, behind oil and automobiles.

He said it is like a Marshall Plan for these three countries.  The iPhone industry creates a million jobs in eastern Asia and provides valuable technological knowledge that makes those countries more competitive in the world.   They aren’t all Apple smartphones, but Apple has half the market and sets the pace.

Public Citizen on the Trans Pacific Partnership

Source: Public Citizen.

Top congressional leaders, including Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate finance committee, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, chair of the House ways and means committee, announced their support for “fast track” approval of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.

This would mean that the House would have 60 days to discuss this complicated agreement, and the Senate an additional 30 days, after which they would have to vote the agreement up or down, without amendment.

But the fact that the leaders support fast track doesn’t mean it’s a done deal.  The procedure still must go before the House and Senate as a whole.

I think the TPP is a bad idea, but, even it were a good idea, it deserves more discussion than fast track would allow.