Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has used a recent rally at Liberty University in Virginia to bring Apple into his push to become the most powerful man in the world. Speaking at the rally, Trump managed to go through his usual repertoire designed to shock Americans into showing some kind of support in the hope of serious change occurring. However, this time the billionaire mentioned Apple into his speech by claiming that he would force the company to bring its hardware production to the United States should he become successful in his bid for the presidency.
That particular part of Trump’s speech was focused on methods of bringing production back to the United States of America and keeping it away from countries with relatively cheaper manufacturing costs, like China. Donald Trump informed the audience that in order to start bringing production back into the country he would force Apple to “start building their damn computers and things in this country”.
Trump isn’t the first person to suggest that producing hardware in the country instead of outsourcing it is a good idea, but that seemed to be where the argument is ended:
I was saying make America great again, and I actually think we can say now, and I really believe this, we’re gonna get things coming… we’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.
Having Apple – and other companies for that matter – bring production back to the United States is clearly the romantic solution that would create jobs and provide a huge boost to the economy. With that said, Trump provided no real tangible argument as to how he and his office would make such a thing happen should he become President of the United States of America. His administration could potentially offer Tim Cook’s Apple Inc. incentives and tax breaks to produce its hardware in the USA, but considering higher labor costs in U.S. compared to China, among other things, there’s no legal reason for Apple to do this and it would take a huge nudge by the government to entice Apple into such a move.
Of course, there’s the glaring fact that supply chains in China for example, are much larger than those in the U.S. so Trump would first have to figure out a way to expand the country’s manufacturing ability to bring it up to par with that of some Asian countries.
Forcing large corporations to move production into the United States isn’t the most ludicrous thing that Trump has said during his campaign, but without a proper roadmap in place as to how he and his administration could realistically make this happen, it’s really nothing more than an attempt to fire up a patriotic crowd vying for change.
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