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The US has no real exports. All of its economic might was because it has its top tier market, and all that wealth is essentially from its soft power and positio

The US has no real exports. All of its economic might was because it has its top tier market, and all that wealth is essentially from its soft power and position. The more you peel off that soft power, the weaker that position especially as wealthy and educated people leave. I don't agree that the US won't be relevant, it's more like the US will resemble the position of Russia in the next decade than the position it is in right now.

hollerith 1y ago
The US is exporting over $3 trillion worth of stuff per year: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports China exports more, but China also must import more, including more of the things needed for the survival of its people, like food, fertilizer, fuel.
- Buttons840 1y ago
  The US exports aircraft, vehicles, and medicine, and the rest of the exports are just raw stuffs, like oil or corn. How's Boeing looking these days? Is the US auto industry where exciting new technologies are coming from? Unless the US is going to be great because we export more coal, then I too expect some decline. US exports: https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-export https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-exp...
  - hollerith 1y ago
    The last big round of global innovation was internet services, of which I'm pretty sure (not having looked it up) that US exports represent the majority of world exports. Apple keeps half the sales price of every iPhone whereas the last I saw Foxconn gets only a few dollars per phone for the final assembly. It used to be that most of the expensive components (display, memory) in the iPhone were supplied by Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, but I admit that that might have changed over the years.
    - garte 1y ago
      It's about the "next big thing" not what happened 20 years ago.
      - hollerith 1y ago
        Sure, but how are you and I supposed to know which country will win the export market for the next big thing? We could guess, but there's been a lot of guesses (confidently made out to be facts and inevitabilities) made in this thread so far. I'm trying to ground the discussion in actual facts.
    - Buttons840 1y ago
      It looks like cell phone exports are about 30 billion dollars, which is 1% of the 3 trillion dollars mentioned earlier. I'm surprised it's so low. (I'm open to corrections on these numbers.)
      - hollerith 1y ago
        Here's my estimate, taken mostly from figures from Apple's 2024 annual report (as reported by Gemini Flash). Apple's total worldwide revenue for fiscal year 2024 was $391.035 billion. The Americas Segment (which includes the US) represented $167.05 billion of that, leaving $224 billion for the rest of the world. Apple reports that their cost of goods sold was $210.352 billion, leaving 180.68 billion as so-called "gross profit". The majority of this gross profit will be used to pay salaries and other expenses (e.g., office space) of having employees, most of which goes to Americans. (Most of the rest will be "retained earnings", which means it either goes back to investors or is used to try to generate new streams of revenue.) But only some of that gross profit will come from exports. Let's assume that exports are as profitable (per unit of revenue) as US sales are, which seems reasonable to me because competition (mostly from Android) would be the main thing keeping gross profit low, and Android is a major competitive force in the US market, so estimated gross profit derived from sales to the rest of the world would be 180.68 * (224 / 391.035) == $103.5 billion. That is revenue from all products and services, and Apple reports that revenue from the iPhone is 0.5145 of all revenue (worldwide) or about $53 billion per year flowing from the rest of the world to Apple (and to governments in the US in the form of taxes). To be clear, that's assuming that zero of the hardware (more precisely, zero of what accountants call the "variable cost") that goes into an iPhone is bought from US suppliers (which seems a reasonable assumption to me).

hollerith 1y ago

The US is exporting over $3 trillion worth of stuff per year: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports China exports more, but China also must import more, including more of the things needed for the survival of its people, like food, fertilizer, fuel.

Buttons840 1y ago
The US exports aircraft, vehicles, and medicine, and the rest of the exports are just raw stuffs, like oil or corn. How's Boeing looking these days? Is the US auto industry where exciting new technologies are coming from? Unless the US is going to be great because we export more coal, then I too expect some decline. US exports: https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-export https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-exp...
- hollerith 1y ago
  The last big round of global innovation was internet services, of which I'm pretty sure (not having looked it up) that US exports represent the majority of world exports. Apple keeps half the sales price of every iPhone whereas the last I saw Foxconn gets only a few dollars per phone for the final assembly. It used to be that most of the expensive components (display, memory) in the iPhone were supplied by Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, but I admit that that might have changed over the years.
  - garte 1y ago
    It's about the "next big thing" not what happened 20 years ago.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Sure, but how are you and I supposed to know which country will win the export market for the next big thing? We could guess, but there's been a lot of guesses (confidently made out to be facts and inevitabilities) made in this thread so far. I'm trying to ground the discussion in actual facts.
  - Buttons840 1y ago
    It looks like cell phone exports are about 30 billion dollars, which is 1% of the 3 trillion dollars mentioned earlier. I'm surprised it's so low. (I'm open to corrections on these numbers.)
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Here's my estimate, taken mostly from figures from Apple's 2024 annual report (as reported by Gemini Flash). Apple's total worldwide revenue for fiscal year 2024 was $391.035 billion. The Americas Segment (which includes the US) represented $167.05 billion of that, leaving $224 billion for the rest of the world. Apple reports that their cost of goods sold was $210.352 billion, leaving 180.68 billion as so-called "gross profit". The majority of this gross profit will be used to pay salaries and other expenses (e.g., office space) of having employees, most of which goes to Americans. (Most of the rest will be "retained earnings", which means it either goes back to investors or is used to try to generate new streams of revenue.) But only some of that gross profit will come from exports. Let's assume that exports are as profitable (per unit of revenue) as US sales are, which seems reasonable to me because competition (mostly from Android) would be the main thing keeping gross profit low, and Android is a major competitive force in the US market, so estimated gross profit derived from sales to the rest of the world would be 180.68 * (224 / 391.035) == $103.5 billion. That is revenue from all products and services, and Apple reports that revenue from the iPhone is 0.5145 of all revenue (worldwide) or about $53 billion per year flowing from the rest of the world to Apple (and to governments in the US in the form of taxes). To be clear, that's assuming that zero of the hardware (more precisely, zero of what accountants call the "variable cost") that goes into an iPhone is bought from US suppliers (which seems a reasonable assumption to me).