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From: ltlee1@hotmail.com (ltlee1)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,alt.politics.usa
Subject: Meet the China Factory Owner Who Voted for Trump and
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Date: Sat, 17 May 2025 16:33:39 +0000
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WSJ headline and subheadline:

"Meet the China Factory Owner Who Voted for Trump and Doesn’t Regret It
Philip Richardson’s audio-equipment business in southern China is
feeling the pain from tariffs, but he still backs the U.S. president"

"“The country needs to be run like a business. Donald Trump is a
businessman,” said Richardson, 62, who also voted for Trump in 2016 and
2020.

There aren’t too many MAGA fans in Guangzhou, the southern China
industrial hub where Richardson’s company manufactures high-end
speakers. Then again, the Long Beach, Calif., native has never cut a
conventional profile.

One of eight children born to a welder and a homemaker, Richardson first
set foot in China in 1998 when he was assigned to audit a factory making
speakers for General Motors in Guangzhou.

It was supposed to be a 12-month stint. Richardson has stayed 27 years.
...

Richardson quickly learned that southern China’s ecosystem of suppliers
in high-end audio equipment gave the country a hard-to-beat edge. When
the specs of components or materials needed tweaking, he could drive an
hour or two to hash it out with the supplier. All the parts needed for
making a driver—the cone-shaped heart of a speaker that converts
electrical waves into sound—were made in China. A similar factory in the
U.S. typically imports the steel and almost all other components.

By 2009, he had set up his own factory, assembling high-end audio
equipment for U.S. retailers. Some of his loudspeakers retail for as
much as $15,000 a pair. ...

“There’s nowhere else on the planet that has the resources available to
manufacturers,” Richardson said. “I’m not here for cheap labor, I’m here
because China has incredible resources in terms of knowledge of tooling,
and manufacturing is deep in their DNA.”