Dr. George Calhoun, Professor and Director of the Hamlin Financial Systems Center at the Stevens Institute of Technology, said American companies, including Apple and Vanguard, have begun "decoupling" from China. Calhoun made his comments during the China Desk Podcast for the Federal Newswire.
"The decoupling is underway big-time," said Calhoun. "A lot of companies are not yet talking loudly about it, because until they've completely achieved whatever the decoupling is that they want to achieve, they don't want to annoy their counterparts in China."
Calhoun said American companies attitude towards China has changed in the last 5-10 years, in his interview with the Federal Newswire. "The change has been very abrupt and an amazing reversal of public sentiment," Calhoun said.
According to Business Insider, Apple's main operations and production are based in China, where iPhones, AirPods, Macs, and iPads are all manufactured. Although Apple is moving its manufacturing to India, their most recent release of VisionPro was assembled by a Chinese contract manufacturer. "Even Apple is looking at how they can de-risk away from dependance on China, and many other companies are doing the same thing. Vanguard, [perhaps] the second largest asset manager in the world after BlackRock, is pulling out of China," Calhoun said during the podcast. He said the change is partly due to China's role in the COVID-19 pandemic but also due to rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China.
Calhoun said there is a sign of growth in the tech market in Japan and Korea, instead of companies being totally reliant on China. "Both of those countries had and still have significant entanglements with the Chinese markets. I'm not saying those are going to go away overnight, but as they reorient to a supply ecosystem, perhaps as a little bit of the semiconductor ecosystem reorients away from China, it's going to benefit those two economies for sure," he said.
Dr. George Calhoun is a Professor and Director at the Hamlin Financial Systems Center at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was Chairman of a company's engineering joint venture with Rafael Armament Development Authority, a branch of the Israeli government.
