iPhone 14 may be late. It is a’concrete hypothesisresult of the worsening of rcontributions between China and Taiwan following Nancy Pelosi’s official visit to Taipei. The problem concerns thelabel accompanying the components shipped from Taiwan to the Chinese Foxonn and Pegatron factories – think of the TSMC processors: from now on, to clear customs, the documentation must bear the words “Made in Taiwan, China” or “Made in Chinese Taipei“.
In reality, this rule had already been active for some time, but certainly the visit of the American representative made tensions resurface by convincing Beijing to restore the hard line. In order to avoid slowdowns, Apple would have explicitly requested its suppliers to submit to this order: some batches of unassembled products would in fact have been stop at the border and return it to the sender as they do not indicate the correct name. Situation that the Californian company would like to avoid from happening again.
Another fear – of Apple but clearly not only – is that as the situation degenerates trade barriers to and from China are strengthened by the Beijing government, not at all happy with the West’s stance in favor of Taipei and of its independence. Problem within the problem, Taiwan also has an export law that must be respected, and requires that products be sent abroad – therefore also to China – with the label “Taiwan” or “Republic of China” (another name of the ‘island, not to be confused with the People’s Republic of China).
Apple, however, has a deadline to meet, which is the availability of the new range of iPhone 14 to be guaranteed by the second part of September. For this reason, it has made an express request that the labels on packages and on everything sent to China have the new wording.
The intention of the Cupertino company is to be punctual with the September event, but the uncertainty increases more and more: first the pandemic, then the Ukrainian conflict and now the tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (or Taiwan) risk undermining the supply chain. Starting with two fundamental partners for Apple, namely TSMC and Pegatron, whose respective top managers were seen last weekend in the company of Nancy Pelosi. And this, in Beijing, was not liked.
Certainly having destined part of the production to India could help.
