There’s no doubt that some U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost to China. But you can’t bring iPad and iPhone manufacturing “back here” for the very good reason that it was never here in the first place. Ten years ago, approximately zero Americans were employed in manufacturing tablet computers and smartphones and that’s still the case today. […] Americans never had any jobs manufacturing iPads. But thanks to the fact that Chinese factories are churning out iPads, lots of people have jobs that wouldn’t exist if the iPad wasn’t available as a hit product.

There’s no doubt that some U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost to China. But you can’t bring iPad and iPhone manufacturing “back here” for the very good reason that it was never here in the first place. Ten years ago, approximately zero Americans were employed in manufacturing tablet computers and smartphones and that’s still the case today.

[…]

Americans never had any jobs manufacturing iPads. But thanks to the fact that Chinese factories are churning out iPads, lots of people have jobs that wouldn’t exist if the iPad wasn’t available as a hit product.

—iPad manufacturing jobs: You can’t bring them back because they were never here.