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Economist Willy Shih on his new book Where Does My Stuff Come From? , RAMageddon, and why we still can’t make the iPhone in America.
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Today, I’m talking with Willy Shih, an economist, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, and the author of the upcoming book, Where Does My Stuff Come From? The Powerful Economics Behind Global Supply Chains .
Willy is one of my all-time favorite Decoder guests — his way of looking at the world through our supply chains is just a fascinating way of making sense of the global economy. I first met Willy in 2019, while The Verge was covering Foxconn’s promise to build an LCD fab in Wisconsin. That obviously never happened, but Willy called it right away because he could see the supply chain to support a fab simply wasn’t in place. We also had Willy on the show in 2021 to talk about what was then the pandemic-era chip shortage.
Now, five years later, we’re in another manufacturing mess, as we stand in the middle of a political fight over whether globalization is coming to an end. Trumps’ tariffs keep changing, the factories that were supposed to reshore in America mostly haven’t materialized, and AI is devouring the planet’s computing resources during an unprecedented infrastructure buildout.
Willy’s new book is all about the economics underlying these complex systems, which our politicians and regulators seem to insistently ignore. You’ll hear us talk about why the markets have reacted to all these disruptions the way they have, and why China remains a global manufacturing powerhouse even though every other country thinks that’s so risky. I loved this conversation — it’s in the weeds, and Willy really knows his stuff.
Okay: economist Will Shih on his new book Where Does My Stuff Come From? Here we go.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Willy Shih, you’re…