

Apple's Chinafication with Patrick McGee
May 16, 2025
46:49
The Trump administration’s new trade policy toward China has revealed just how deeply enmeshed major American corporations are with our chief geopolitical rival. Apple’s story is perhaps the most dramatic.
Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China and San Francisco correspondent for the Financial Times, joins Oren to discuss how Apple, like so many other nominally American companies, is constrained by the rules, regulations, and industrial preferences of the Chinese Communist Party. They break down how China dominates its peer competitors, the way multinational corporations sleepwalked into the present crisis, and the possibility of America breaking China’s industrial chokehold.
Further reading:
- Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company by Patrick McGee
- Trade with Communists Should Be Uncertain by Oren Cass
- Disfavored Nation by Mark DiPlacido, Chris Griswold, and Trevor Jones