View photos (Bloomberg) — Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Even the unseasonable downpour couldn’t dampen the spirits of the executives and officials gathered on the Indonesian island of Batam to cut the ribbon on a new Pegatron Corp factory. The men exchanged jokes as they took shelter under a white canopy, and when company vice chairman Jason Cheng pledged to hire hundreds of locals, the assembled audience erupted in applause. This low-key July ceremony to launch a manufacturing outpost marked a critical first step into Southeast Asia for one of Apple Inc.’s most important suppliers. It also encapsulates a fundamental move of electronics production, set in motion by the escalating U.S.-China trade war, that may hurt the world’s No. 2 economy while enriching Southeast Asia and beyond. “Pegatron, and many more to come, is an opportunity,” Edy Putra Irawady, head of a local agency charged with ent...
Comments
Post a Comment