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A report written by three U.S. professors showed that only about “$10 or less in direct labor wages goes into an iPhone or iPad is paid to Chinese workers.”
The report points out that while the Apple products – including components – are manufactured in China, the primary benefits go to the U.S. economy because Apple continues to keep most of its product design, software development, product management, marketing and other high-wage functions in the U.S., not China.
China’s role is more of an assembler....
Kenneth Kraemer, a professor from the University of California, said that most consumers don’t understand how Apple’s global supply chain works. “They focus only on the trade deficit with China, and therefore they think China has a bigger role. What they don’t understand is that China gets all sorts of input from other countries from Japan, the U.S., Malaysia and so on. China’s contribution is really a small amount of labor,” Kraemer was quoted as saying in the paper.