One notable fact that's missing from the article is that China will lie and bend over backwards to secure business. They have no problem telling a potential cus

One notable fact that's missing from the article is that China will lie and bend over backwards to secure business. They have no problem telling a potential customer that they can meet specifications they cannot meet. They will greatly overstate their capacity and capabilities and then bullshit their way to success by "throwing a handful of shit and seeing what sticks." Meaning they will produce and produce and produce products, ship them to the customer, and accept whatever they get for RMA's. They barely do any kind of inspection. They just ship parts and hope not a whole lot will come back. Here in the USA our companies take liability into account. Our precision manufacturing sector is much older and more experienced, but also each entity is smaller due to America being truly capitalist. Apple is the kind of customer that small American companies don't want to deal with. Their buyers are demanding, uncompromising, and don't understand manufacturing. They want to buy 100,000 screws and cannot understand why they aren't already on a shelf somewhere waiting to be shipped. They don't care either, they just NEED the screws. If Apple is a customer of yours, you probably don't do business with many other companies. Apple deadlines and requirements don't specifically disallow it, they just don't leave enough foom for it. Just ask GT Advanced Technologies what it's like dealing with Apple as a supplier. They signed a contract with Apple, spent all their capital acquiring Apple approved manufacturing equipment, and then fought with Apple QC about acceptance criteria that their Apple approved equipment couldn't meet. They did this until GT ran out of money and went belly up. They spent so much resources trying to satisfy Apple that they couldn't satisfy anybody else.