Abundance

by Ezra Klein

The iPhone made Apple, based in Cupertino, California, into the most valuable company in the world even though two-thirds of the phones are assembled in Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China.12 Microsoft and Alphabet mostly sell bits of intangible code. Tesla’s value lies in the software and battery advances that have taken electric vehicles from the automotive equivalent of granola to the sleek, fast cars of the future. We do not trade in the fallacious belief that manufacturing and innovation are distant domains. Taiwan started out manufacturing commodity semiconductor chips that Intel cared little about. Over time, its lead in production allowed it to develop advanced chips that American companies cannot yet replicate and that American policymakers fear falling into Chinese hands. America lost its primacy in semiconductor innovation because much is learned in the making of things—a theme to which we’ll return.