Trump thinks Apple can manufacture iPhones in the US, but can it?

Summary: US President Trump thinks Apple can manufacture its iPhones in the US. However, the reality is more complicated than that, and something that Apple’s current and former CEOs have been saying for years.

Apple customers are in panic mode right now. Following Trump’s recent announcement of tariffs and fears that this could drastically increase prices of the iPhone, customers have been rushing to Apple stores to buy the iPhone. But can Apple avoid these tariffs if it makes the iPhone in the US? According to US President Donald Trump, he believes that Apple has the capability to manufacture its iPhones in the US.

During a recent press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if Trump thought that iPhone manufacturing could be moved to the US. Leavitt responded by saying, “Absolutely, he believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. And as you know, Apple has invested $500 billion here in the United States, so if Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change.”

Manufacture iPhones in the US? It’s not so simple

However, despite what Trump believes Apple can do, the reality isn’t so simple. During a 2017 interview with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, he stated that Apple chose China not because of lower labor costs, but also because of the technology the country possesses and the skilled workforce behind it.

Cook said, “The reason is because of the skill, the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill it is. Like the products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. You know, in the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It’s that vocational expertise is very deep.”

Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs also expressed a similar sentiment. In Walter Isaacon’s biography of Jobs, Jobs told then-US President Barack Obama that Apple’s education system was an obstacle for Apple, and why it had to rely on countries like China. Jobs noted that Apple needed 30,000 industrial engineers just to support its on-site factory workers.

That being said, manufacturing is just one part of the story. While Apple relies heavily on China for manufacturing, it also relies on more than 50 countries for the components used in the iPhone. It also uses a lot of rare earth minerals from 79 countries. This means that even if Apple decides to manufacture its iPhones in the US, it’s just a small piece of the puzzle and not as simple as Trump thinks.

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