Reshoring just got serious, (as if it wasn’t before)
The Chinese Communist Party announced in September that workers should stop using iPhones inside China’s government offices. 1
The iPhone is so pervasive through the Chinese population, like 20% of them use iPhones, that this development is causing reverberations throughout the business world. If they can turn their back on Apple, with that kind of market penetration, every other foreign company in China is vulnerable.
China has been making moves to be more self-reliant. If you are getting components and subassemblies from China, your exposure has increased greatly. I say greatly because there are many within the U.S. business community that knew this threat was always there, and this would happen someday. Doing business in and doing strategic sourcing in China always carried risk. That level of risk was the point debated.
I’ll use the analogy of my younger brother. When he was graduating high school, he was recruited to play a sport at Westpoint Academy. It was a great opportunity, and he was so excited about getting to go to Westpoint and play his sport. I did clarify for him though, that what was really happening was, he was enlisting in the Army, his billet was Westpoint, and they were letting him play his sport (if it suited them).
Many of us in the U.S. competing with suppliers in China have been saying, for many years, that sourcing in China may work for them, as long as the Chinese government felt like it was advantageous FOR CHINA.
Sourced your molds and or molding in China? Think you are big enough to “manage” the situation, (think of $2 Trillion dollar Apple getting snubbed). There is capacity back here in the U.S., but as always, that is a fluctuating situation.
If you are already sourced domestically, be careful you don’t get “bumped” for a new customer with higher volumes and part numbers than yours.
PlastiCert has already worked on both. Projects that need to be reshored and programs that were booted because of larger volume/revenue packages left them low on the list of customers. We have blogged about it before. We cater to small and medium volume molding programs. We can help you get things flowing here in the states or take the place of an ungrateful molder that bumped you for a better opportunity. Give us a call.
1 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-govt-officials-using-iphone-work-wsj-2023-09-06/