On the back of every iPhone, tiny print reminds you it was \u201cDesigned by Apple in California. Assembled in China.\u201d One of president-elect Trump\u2019s campaign promises was getting Apple to move production here\u2014and he says he told Tim Cook that very thing directly.<\/span><\/p>\n In his meeting Tuesday with the New York Times (a full transcript is available), Trump said he\u2019d spoken to Cook on the phone.<\/span><\/p>\n I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple, and I said, \u2018Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you\u2019re making your product right here.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Cook replied, according to Trump, \u201cI understand that.\u201d So then Trump dangled the carrot of tax breaks.<\/span><\/p>\n [Cook] said, \u2018I understand that.\u2019 I said: \u2018I think we\u2019ll create the incentives for you, and I think you\u2019re going to do it. We\u2019re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you\u2019ll be happy about.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s worth noting that the current Mac Pro, redesigned in 2013, is assembled in the USA, in a factory outside Austin, Texas. But the Mac Pro might just be Apple\u2019s least-selling product. The iPhone is another story. Cook has claimed in the past that the reason iPhones are assembled in China is mostly one of scale\u2014Apple can\u2019t find enough skilled workers here to fill the needs of a company that sells as many as 400 iPhones per minuite. (Check out this fun site for a representation of how much merchandise Apple moves each second.)<\/span><\/p>\n Cook told Charlie Rose in December 2015, \u201cThe U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we\u2019re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n So we\u2019ll see if tax breaks, should they materialize, are enough to bring manufacturing of any Apple product back to the United States during Trump\u2019s presidency, or if more structural changes in education will also be needed that might take more time to bear out. Apple is already reportedly looking into what such a move would cost, with a report in Nikkei Asian Review that the company had asked Foxconn to prepare a report on the feasibility of building iPhone assembly plants in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n Another factor in Apple\u2019s decision-making could be Trump\u2019s plan to introduce a 45 percent tax on products imported from China. Any of these changes, should they come to pass, could affect the retail price of iPhones\u2014a topic explored in this week\u2019s episode of The iPhone Show.<\/span><\/p>\n Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3144338\/apple-phone\/donald-trump-tells-tim-cook-to-build-iphones-in-the-usa.html<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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