Oliver Haslam on July 27, 2017, 8:41 am

President Trump: Apple Promises To Build Three Big Manufacturing Plants In U.S.

Manufacturing in the United States is a big deal, especially for President Trump. After all, part of his campaign was based on getting the likes of Apple to bring some of its manufacturing back to the States and away from places like China.

Now, Trump claims that Apple CEO Tim Cook has told him that such a move is in the pipeline, with three manufacturing plants supposedly on their way to the United States.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Trump said that Cook promised “three big plants —big, big, big,” would be built in the States, although as you may expect, Apple declined to comment on the report. Apple’s Tim Cook has said in the past that he would like for his company to build more products at home, and while it does currently have a small portion of its hardware built on U.S. soil, things like the iPhone and iPad continue to be built overseas.

This is unlikely to change any time soon, despite Trump’s claim.

Adding to the confusion, however, is the news that Foxconn has announced that it will spend $10 million on manufacturing in the United States. Foxconn is a partner of Apple and as such, the immediate response was that perhaps Apple was indeed bringing manufacturing back to the States. However, Foxconn’s new factory will be configured to build TV displays for Sharp rather than iPhones for Apple, so the initial excitement on that front appears to have been misplaced. The new facility will apparently create jobs for around 3,000 people, however, so there will undoubtedly be winners here.

Whether Apple will indeed start to manufacture more products in its backyard very much remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure – if it does happen, it will be because it makes financial sense for Apple.

Not because President Trump wants it to happen.

(Source: WSJ)