Why Apple Can’t Make iPhones in U.S.: “Small Hands” of Chinese Workers, New York Times Claims

“Young Chinese women have small fingers,” newspaper says

iPhones for sale at an Apple retail store in a mall in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Under the print headline “A ‘Made in America’ iPhone? ‘Absurd.’ Experts Explain Why,” the New York Times tries to convince readers that American workers are physically incapable of making iPhones. President Trump has been pressing Apple to move manufacturing of the devices to America.

From the Times article, which is by a San Francisco-based reported named Tripp Mickle:

What does China offer that the United States doesn’t?

Small hands, a massive, seasonal work force and millions of engineers.

Young Chinese women have small fingers, 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. In a recent analysis the company did to explore the feasibility of moving production to the United States, the company determined that it couldn’t find people with those skills in the United States, said two people familiar with the analysis who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Better journalism would be more skeptical of the claim that it’s the finger-size of the workers that is the determining factor here. Here is one thing China offers that the United States doesn’t that is entirely overlooked in the Times article:

Chinese Communist rule that effectively bans workers from forming independent labor unions to negotiate for better wages and working conditions. The unions in China are controlled by the Communist Party. Labor organizers complain about American labor laws being unfriendly. Compared to China, though, America is a relative paradise for unions and for manufacturing workers. When it comes to freedom and rule of law, we are far ahead, with the rights to speech and assembly guaranteed in the First Amendment and supported by civil society, including religion, that often allies with labor against management.

Meanwhile, American cities and suburban strip malls are full of manicure salons and massage parlors operated by women with manual dexterity skills. Some of those women are from the same genetic stock as the workers in Apple’s China-based factories.

I’m no engineer, but I can think of a lot of possible ways around this supposedly insuperable problem. Employ young Chinese-American women in U.S.-based factories, is one potential solution. Invite legal immigration for those with the needed skills. Or engineer the device so that it has fewer screws and so that the assembly relies more on automation rather than human workers.

There are many other tasks—phlebotomy, eye surgery, pastry chef, wedding cake decorator, clarinet playing, injecting Botox—that demand high levels of manual dexterity. America hasn’t yet abandoned those tasks to China on the grounds that our hands are too large.

If this hand-size excuse had been offered up by anonymous so-called “experts” on behalf of some company resisting a Democratic president’s request to move manufacturing to America, the Times would probably have ridiculed it and called it racist and sexist. But when the idea or request comes from President Trump, it’s the Times and its so-called experts calling made-in-America “absurd.” What’s really absurd is the Times news department’s willingness to accept without skepticism even the most far-fetched arguments so long as they oppose Trump’s policy agenda. The reflexiveness erodes the newspaper’s credibility, making the Times overall less trustworthy.

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