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| By River Page |
It’s Monday, April 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Why Apple in China is too big to fail. A test for the progressive left in Oakland. Gretchen Whitmer hides her face in ambush photo op. And much more.
But first, our lead story today:
Why Both the Chinese and American Economies Need You to Keep Buying iPhones
Amid fears of a $3,500 iPhone that sent consumers rushing to stores, Apple was spared from Trump’s new reciprocal tariffs on Friday, at least temporarily. For the time being, iPhones—along with a vast array of other electronics—will be subjected only to the 20 percent tariff levied on virtually all Chinese goods last month. But the White House insists that one day, as a result of the tariffs, iPhones will be American-made.
Today in our pages, Patrick McGee says that idea is a fever dream. “The problem with building iPhones in America isn’t that they’d be priced at $3,500 each; it’s that they wouldn’t be built at all,” he argues.
No one understands the subject of Apple and China more deeply than McGee, who—thanks to Trump—has written maybe the best-timed book of the year. Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company is out May 13.
The sheer scale of what it takes to create the glass rectangle in your pocket is shocking—1,000 components across hundreds of factories with workers laboring round the clock. “What’s certain is that the U.S. and China both need Apple to succeed, albeit for very different reasons. The world’s most valuable company now finds itself caught in a cold war between two superpowers that want a divorce but need to make it work for their kid.”
McGee explains it all here: “China and America Agree: Apple Is Too Big to Fail.”
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Tyler Cowen: How AI Could Scupper China’s Ambitions
Conventional wisdom assumes that the American empire is in decline. We’ve overstretched our bounds, spent trillions on pointless wars, and traded our industrial base for a decadent conveyor belt of cheap goods from abroad. Plus, our burgeoning AI industry relies on chips made in Taiwan, which exists under constant threat of invasion by China.
According to this view, the twenty-first century belongs to China.
But economist and Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen says that’s nonsense.
It isn’t China that’s shaping the future, he says, but artificial intelligence, which is as American as apple pie. “The most intelligent entities in the world are thinking, and evaluating options, like Westerners and Americans,” Tyler writes. “One of the biggest soft power victories in all of world history occurred over the last few years.” So why has hardly anyone noticed?
Read Tyler Cowen: “The Conventional Wisdom Is That China Is Beating Us. Nonsense.”
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Oakland’s Mayoral Race Is a Litmus Test for the Left
It’s been a tough few years for Oakland, California. Crime has risen, businesses and major league sports teams are fleeing the city, prostitutes are soliciting customers in front of elementary schools, and deranged “stunt” drivers have taken over residential streets, causing mayhem. Voters have responded with fury, recalling progressive mayor Sheng Thao after just two years in office.
Today in The Free Press, Bay Area journalist Leighton Woodhouse reports on the race to replace Thao. The establishment wants former Representative Barbara Lee, who cemented her left-wing bona fides in 2001, when she was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force after 9/11. Oakland voters remember her fondly for that. But the candidacy of Loren Taylor—a moderate former city council member who made his mark opposing efforts to defund the police—is gaining steam. As Leighton reports, this is no ordinary mayoral election. It’s a referendum on the progressive politics that have dominated Oakland since the Black Panthers set up shop in the 1970s. The question is: Have voters finally had enough?
Read Leighton Woodhouse’s dispatch: “Will Oakland Finally Reject Progressive Politics?”
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Can Video Games Make You a Better Man?
Read Aaron Bronfman on the return of The Last of Us.
Is the Dire Wolf Truly Back from the Dead?
America and the Exodus
Kill Tony, the White Lotus Gift Shop, and Gen Z Surveillance
Read Suzy Weiss’s latest culture roundup.
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Early Sunday morning an arsonist set fire to the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro while he and his family were asleep in a different part of the house. The attack happened just hours after Shapiro, who is Jewish, posted a photo of his family’s seder table on social media and wished his followers a happy Passover