Bill Bennett: Tech Commentator on the impact of tariff backtracking on China

Donald Trump has backtracked on reciprocal tariffs set on China by removing them on electronics.  

Twenty percent of Chinese business in the United States comes from electronics. 

Tech Commentator Bill Bennett talks to Mike Hosking about the impact this will have. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another backdown from Trump. Landers Richard toldas earlier on as
he blinks again, this time over tech laptop, smartphones, memory chips,
they're now excluded.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The significance here is that's twenty percent of Chinese business
into America. Of course, commentator Bill Bennett is with us
this Monday morning. Bill, good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
That presumably means there aren't millions of Americans with tiny
little screwdrivers looking to screw in tiny little screws anymore.
So that saves them getting employed in Idaho and Indiana
and all the other places. What do you make of
this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh, it's a complete mess, and it's confusing, and it's
the one thing that is actually doing for companies that
are in the business is that it's not giving them certainty.
And if you ever speak to any people and business
doing these things, you know the one thing they're looking
for is certainty. And like I said, that's success what

(00:49):
they're not getting. But the whole idea that you can
build iPhones in the US, it's a fantasy. It's crazy.
I mean, the point about people's highly screw drivers, it's true,
and there are there are hundreds of thousands of people's
people doing that in China. But behind the people that
are on the front line assembling things like iPhones and

(01:11):
laptops and so on, there are very qualified, very skilled
manufacturing engineers, and there are lots of them. There's probably
thirty thousand of those people in Shensen alone, just one
city in China, and there's probably not maybe two thousands
in all of the USA. And those people have three

(01:33):
or four year degrees. They you know, they go away
to college, they learn that stuff. Then they need to
get experiences on just getting those people in place, unless
unless you bring them all in from China, which of
course is the last thing mister Trump wants to do.
Unless you do that, America is going to take sort
of seven or eight years just to get those people

(01:54):
in place lit alone anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if it's worth
talking to you, because you and I you know, you're
a bright guy and we get it. But what, given
what you've just explained, and given how obvious that is,
what's driving the thinking behind on shoring that's never going
to happen.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, it's what when things went the other way, jobs
were lost. That's that's the shore. I mean, factories closed
and the jobs moved to China and Mexico and India
and Vietnam and so on from the USA. But the thing, but,
like I just said that, it's not something it's not
a reversible thing. It's not something you can bring back.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
No, exactly precisely. Bill appreciate it very much. Bill Bennett,
Tech Commentator. For more from The Mic Asking Breakfast, listen
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