Apple announces American Manufacturing Program
apple.com
apple.com
2017: "Apple promised to give US manufacturing a $1 billion boost"
2018: "Apple will make $350 billion contribution to U.S. economy and promised to create 20,000 jobs"
2021: "Apple commits $430 billion in US investments over 5 years"
From https://bsky.app/profile/bgrueskin.bsky.social/post/3lvqqyd4...
First, even one day of dictatorship is in direct violation of the Constitution.
Second, we're coming up on day 200 and the Trump administration continues to assert an expansive view of executive power far beyond any historical precedent and to degrade the systems designed to check that power, following a 100% run of the mill authoritarian playbook.
Still not correct.
What you trimmed off:
> Hannity: Under no circumstances, you're promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody
> Trump: Except for Day One... look he's going crazy... Except day one.
> Hannity: Meaning?
> Trump: I'm going to close the border and we're going to drill, drill, drill
Update from day 199:
The border is closed (partially illegally) [1], US oil rigs are down [2], and he is in fact abusing power as retribution against dozens of people and institutions.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/court-limits-trump-asylum-crack...
That's just part of the puzzle. What makes CPC different from most dictatorships is like NK or SU is that most of ruling elite of CPC is made up of engineers. Along with mandatory CPC ideology leaning, they also have notion that a developed nation is one that builds things. Bankers and Lawyers are ranked way down on power rankings.
On the other hand, most of American ruling elite are lawyers or bankers. So their worldview is mostly rule lawyering, interest earning, hedge fund etc.. Power brokers in these fields make the rules. Builders and engineers rank pretty low in power totem pole.
We forget these days that Chinese communism was a tire fire for the first half century. In 1990 China had the same per capita GDP (PPP) as India. Now China is 4x India.
This will happen sooner than you think if the US continues on its current path. Already Trump is asking for something similar for universities. He can use the same hammer for companies as well; deny them all government funding/contracts until they 'voluntarily' give in.
The 'c' word for this is not communism, but corruption. The special thing about corruption is that it can happen in any political 'ism'.
I don’t even know what to call someone who thinks the government should give private parties discretionary grants and contracts, but shouldn’t be able to use those to influence private actors. I’d call it libertarianism, but the principled libertarian would say we should abolish all funding to private universities.
The idea that the sovereign should be limited to follow law, due process, and the advice of experts in the administration of grants goes back at least to the magna carta and is so widespread that you would use a more specific term — a "constitutional monarchist", "republican", "democrat", or "democratic socialist", etc., would all agree on this point. The opposite point of view however, has a name — authoritarian — so you could call such a person "anti-authoritarian".
Due process protects rights and entitlements. Nobody has a right to receive discretionary government contracts or grants. To the extent we’re taking about preexisting contracts, the universities can sue to enforce whatever contractual rights they have. We have a robust system for recovering from the government for breaches of contract.
> and the advice of experts in the administration of grants
The “expert” stuff is the legacy of a scientific racist who didn’t trust democracy. It’s antithetical to democracy to suggest that the public should be forced to give discretionary grants and contracts to particular entities based on what “experts” think. Those experts are often themselves closely intertwined with the entities receiving the funding! They’re alums of Harvard, they met their spouse during grad school at Columbia, etc. They’ve got deep conflicts of interest.
The landscape has also changed. In 2018, Apple could wait out Trump hoping to get the Bush GOP back. That party is dead. It will still be corporate friendly, but not on immigration or trade. Big Ag couldn’t even get carved out of the immigration raids. The Clinton Democratic Party is dead too. What’s the odds that either Vance 2028 or AOC 2028 are going to let Apple off the hook on commitments?
The tariffs themselves obviously do not have the requisite durability to justify actual high scale capex. It would be quite literally stupid to invest much in US manufacturing just to get undercut in either 1) a few months when courts rule the entire endeavor unconstitutional or 2) a few years when Trump is out of office.
Because before, the administration was staffed with Bushies who were happy to let things go when the boss lost interest. Now it’s staffed with people who would be happy to burn Apple down.
> The tariffs themselves obviously do not have the requisite durability to justify actual high scale capex… a few years when Trump is out of office. Trump is the moderate one.
When Trump leaves office in 2028, he’ll either be replaced with JD, or a progressive Democrat. The Bush GOP definitely isn’t coming back, and I suspect the Biden Democratic Party isn’t either. Cutting tariffs isn’t going to be a high priority of the incoming administration either way. And even Biden didn’t cut many of Trump’s tariffs from his first administration.
https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...
They did amount to something.
Those announcements were part of Apple's initiative to build/assemble certain Mac Pros in Texas.
The idea is to do it on a high-margin, low-volume product so that any hiccups can be absorbed in the accounting and aren't as impactful to millions of customers. Hiccups like a dearth of US suppliers of subcomponents.
If a North American customer purchases a Mac Pro its final assembly occurs in Austin, Texas.
According to local media and government reports Apple has spent over a billion dollars in Austin and directly employed about 10,000 new permanent workers so far.
If you count local suppliers, the total is higher.
You can see some of the billion dollars here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/dHy52bEoWizDC5qz5
You can click on "See more dates" and select 2020 to see that in two years that site went from "empty lot" to "hundreds of thousands of square feet and thousands of workers".
The Flextronics facility about a mile-and-a-half to the south is another chunk of cash.
Additionally, many, MANY, components from audio codecs to SoC cores to sheets of glass used in Apple products are made in the US and exported for integration into products that are assembled overseas.
If you think 5 years from announcement to construction is a long time, I've been working about that long on a committee to build a tiny 4-bay fire station. It isn't about money, we have the money and infinite money wouldn't really change anything. It's about permits, contractor availability, and subsystem/subcomponent lead times. The diesel fume extraction system installers had a year-long backlog of work alone.
If you're waiting for the iPhone to be built in the US, you're going to be waiting for a long time, perhaps an infinitely long time. Other, higher-margin lower-volume, products? That's more likely.
I'm more familiar than most with how difficult it is to build things in the US, because I build satellites for a living and fire stations as a civic duty.
It's hard.
I could've been more precise in my wording. Sometimes these announcements (from Apple and other companies) are realized into completed projects, but very often they are misleading/exaggerated claims about money that was already going to be spent, or could possibly be spent.
Trump 2024 is a completely different animal, with control in all 3 branches of government, plus overwhelming voter support in the election. As well as the collapse of globalization (baby boomer retiring reducing demand), and many countries moving to the right at the same time. Reshoring is the correct choice for the next 10 years and beyond, and many multinationals recognize this and have committed hundreds of billions accordingly.
What kind of system are you installing? I’ve provided electrical and control wiring for exhaust hose reels at DOT maintenance facilities and bus garages in my local market, you only need a roofer, a mechanical contractor, and an electrician.
If it’s CO/NO sensors with makeup air units and exhaust fans, again that is just roofers, mechanical, and electrical, with widely available parts.
My guess is your fire station is at the ass end of nowhere which limits contractor availability or something along those lines? I’m used to my local metro area market of 3M people with dozens of mechanical, electrical, and commercial roofing contractors around to work with.
As opposed to actually eliminating the source of the hiccups.
The Japanese auto manufacturers moved their high-volume, low-margin assembly to the US and succeeded. They started by importing nearly every component and then steadily replaced them with locally-built components.
If Apple was serious, that’s what they would have done. You know, like how they did it in India. Like how they did it in Malaysia. Like how they did it in Vietnam.
Apple’s not serious about US-based manufacturing until proven otherwise. Gold statues don’t prove anything.
Ironically, Trump's "gotta show results _now!_" rhetoric might kneecap onshoring like this.
They made a similar commitment in 2018 [1] and 2021 [2], but I can't find any info about whether they actually followed through and whether the projected job numbers were accurate.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/apple-announces-350-billion-...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-announces-430-billio...
If the factory exists it will be ugly, noisy, shit jobs, exploitative, evil bosses, turning the neighbourhood into a slum, etc. People are happier without it existing.
> Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000
https://www.azfamily.com/2025/04/29/tsmc-breaks-ground-third...
https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/3210
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/311514/20250728/tesla-tap...
I don't think GP was saying "no one invests in the US," but rather that these particular announcements clearly designed to appease POTUS do not come to fruition.
Funniest one is Masayoshi Son announcements, in 2016 - $50B for 50k jobs, and in 2024 - $100B for 100k jobs !
2016: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/06/trump-says-softbank-will-inv...
2024: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/softbank-ceo-to-announce-100...
Funny thing here is, that he doesn't even have that money. But who cares these days...
I myself, $1T for 100 million jobs.
Top tier fidelity here, like in days of old, the Duke of Apple has traveled far to present King Trump with tribute.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-...
So the new jobs they're creating _won't_ be in manufacturing.
Nice PR headline though.
https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...
Luckily the president doesn't know a metaphor when he sees one.
But if this even gives us some chance to jolt our manufacturing sector back, will we start to gain some momentum? Even if it's mostly using automation. Will it help to reduce our reliance on China?
I doubt it will in the same way that it's been extremely hard for other countries to replicate the US momentum in R&D.
But one can hope.
2. The tariffs are producing revenue for the Federal government. Hundreds of billions per year. To remove the tariffs arbitrarily in the future, a President would need to assume the political risk of increasing the national deficit.
3. Trump imposed tarriffs on his first term that Biden did not reverse. Even if the next President is a Democrat it's more likely than not that the trade deals remain in place.
4. A strong contender for the next president is the current vice president, JD Vance, who would be highly unlikely to reverse.
Trump didn’t initiate sweeping tariffs in his last term, and they weren’t wildly unpopular. Trump is accumulating enough bad will at the moment to make it very politically easy for someone to wash away everything if they win the 2028 election.
If Trump's moves pan out in the positive for American people over the next year or two, controversial as they may be in the present, then sentiment will increase, plain and simple.
JD Vance is quite popular among Republicans and reasonably popular among independents, which is all you need to win the presidency. The Democrats, on the other hand, have no heir apparent and have quite a few structural issues within their own party at the national level. We'll see what the actual field looks like in 2028 but that is a long ways off and a lot will change between now and then.
Of course Apple didn't do it on their own accord, there was way too much profit to be made from outsourcing to China. Everyone else was doing it, why not also the richest company on earth?
Tomato harvesting is done in an air conditioned tractor these days:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/pDxZhOw9IH4
https://youtu.be/l4Dc6QNWiIs?si=S9qrFNpUBM5KuSrx
Production on iPhone can be highly automated these days as well. There are plenty of good examples of revitalized computer hardware manufacturing in the U.S. like the Starlink Factory in Bastrop, TX:
https://youtu.be/qz0k4wj_KlA?si=qUqJ0DWTRpHa4cgY
or the TSMC factory in Arizona, which has similar amenities to many software offices:
The reality is our entire economy is more or less fake - it's propped up like a dead body by hyper-consumerism. We rely on buying way more shit than we should, and that, in turn, requires warm bodies who can't live off their wages. This is in high contrast to the economy of the early to mid 20th century.
We can rip that bandaid off, but things would suck for a while, maybe a long time. That's a hard sell - especially since we (not underpaid) get nothing.
Any amount of returning manufacturing here, returning power to the middle class by increasing the demand for labor and stopping the exploitation of foreign workers is a good thing. I can't stand listening to him talk, but if iPhones aren't reliant on slaves mining cobalt and 13 year olds working 12 hours a days I will consider that a win.
The USA is sort of addicted to consumption (where China wants to be actually), you could dissuade a lot of consumption by raising taxes on it (if, for example, you want people to save more and focus only on necessities). It would be a huge change for America though, the market might not survive intact if it happens too quickly.
I don’t think Americans realize that we haven’t suffered a global war since 1945 precisely because global trade took over and nations’ economies became more interdependent than isolated.
These trade wars are signalling pretty much all countries in the world to become more self-sustaining and less dependent on each other. Countries who succeed will be more confident to enter armed conflict because they’ll have less to lose, and those with lots to gain will have every incentive to start or join a war against those who have resources.
Countries have aligned themselves to maximise Ricardian comparative advantage, and there's no way for the global economy to realign itself towards plain old mercantilism without massive pain for everyone.
...it gifts authoritarian power to autocrats and fully guarantees more authoritarian behavior.
Ironically, your comment is double-bladed.
This has likely been in the works from when China shook Apple down and the timing has a nice upside that it also pacifies His Orangeness(tm).
And Intel's $28B factory in OH?
PR (and golden gifts (bribes?)) is easy.
People have pointed out that brands all put rainbows on their public docs for pride month. But not in Islamic countries and much less with Trump in power etc.
This is just the same effect but for US nationalists no?
Actual decisions and spending/investment etc will continue to be driven by economics. But PR is about who you want to reassure/appease/curry favour with. And the two are basically independent.
Onshoring assembly of consumer electronics despite low unemployment - bad
It's good the correct subset of manufacturing is being onshored.
Why? Especially considering military systems are looking increasingly like masses of consumer electronics (e.g. FPV drones).
Bring back slavery to the USA. :-)
That's a policy straitjacket: a demand that strategic and necessary things can be done only if there's no downside for some privileged group.
If the US doesn't want to be a weak-ass paper tiger, it needs the capability to mass-produce consumer electronics (a civilian capability that can be redirected for military purposes, if needed). That will likely require trade offs.
Let's employ fewer people in the sandwich-assembly industry and more people assembling electronics.
It's not spineless, it's his job to act in the interests of the company
Aside from a few things, Trump did say what he was going to do. And that included Tariffs and pressuring US companies to move manufacturing home.
It's what the people voted for and Apple knows this.
So, it's also smart.
Makes me nauseous.
The program’s breadth also deserves recognition. It includes manufacturing partnerships, data centres, clean energy, and support for educational and community initiatives. This is not PR fluff. Apple’s prior commitments funded chipmaking in Arizona, new engineering hubs and 5G innovation. The expansion builds on that trajectory.
Critics may argue Apple is acting in self-interest. So be it. Public policy should align incentives such that private benefit also serves the public good. In this case, job creation, supply chain resilience, and regional development in states like Iowa and Oregon are clear wins.
Of course, Apple’s global tax practices remain a fair target. But criticising every constructive move on that basis alone risks undermining the very kind of behaviour governments should encourage: strategic reinvestment, not financial engineering.
This is a large, measurable, and multi-year commitment. It should be acknowledged as such.
They brought a 24k gold trophy for the president. That’s the tangible demonstration here.
> This is not PR fluff. > Critics may argue Apple is acting in self-interest.
This is PR fluff and, as a critic, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest.
> This is a large, measurable, and multi-year commitment. It should be acknowledged as such.
How does this compare to the large measurable multi year commitments from the last few administrations that never materialized? What about the one from a few months ago the ago?
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
> This is a large, measurable, and multi-year commitment. It should be acknowledged as such.
We'll see. The multi-year nature can be seen as a feature or a bug. The benefits are delivered today: tariff carve outs. The promises can be scaled back at any time in the future. We're dealing with what is likely to be an incredibly anomalous economic... "policy". It is likely to not stick around once the current administration leaves, and perhaps even during the course of the current administration. If tariffs go away in the future, then the threat (and reward) disappear along with it. We'll see how incentivized Apple is to keep these commitments under those conditions if they come about.
> Of course, Apple’s global tax practices remain a fair target. But criticising every constructive move on that basis alone risks undermining the very kind of behaviour governments should encourage: strategic reinvestment, not financial engineering.
It should always go without saying that there are ways to go about this that don't involve policies that hurt both consumers and small companies alike. The CHIPS act was one example, and the benefits were arguably more evenly distributed (vs. a set of investments that probably disproportionately help the existing market leader). This administration went out of their way to dismantle that. No conversation about this should leave that out.
> Critics may argue Apple is acting in self-interest. So be it.
Neither this administration nor Apple seem to really care much about this. This matters for the reasons above: it doesn't make this deal particularly resilient. Both parties got what they wanted immediately: Apple got to avoid an unexpected roadblock (and perhaps gained an advantage over other companies), and Trump gets to look like he got this great deal. So what's to keep it around? This is why aligning actual long term incentives matters, vs. this short term nonsense. A congressional bill for example at minimum has constituents who will benefit or punish the representative at the polls. But we don't even need to get that technical, if neither party cares or believes in this at all, then it is of course set up to default fail. This is not a trivial undertaking we are talking about. It's not just a matter of getting the right parties to invest. You are asking to dramatically change a set of pipelines that have been established over the course of decades and regularly receive equivalent amounts of investment. If you actually want this to happen, you should care about how it happens, and you should realize it matters if this is made up entirely of cynical players with no real demonstrable upside in the end result.
There is no grand strategy here and I assure you after he is gone nobody will even know if this pledge was followed through.
Even if they do actually follow through with it, it'll only be "assembly".
Also people calling for tariffs do not understand them, nor do they understand that; yes, China manufactures a shitload of iPhones, and Chinese companies make a small profit on doing so - a deal with Apple is very lucrative. But the majority of the profit made from selling an iPhone goes to Apple, aka an AMERICAN company. For iPhones sold ALL over the world.
Waaaa, I have to import my iPhone from China to America; the profits are still going back to America, perhaps every country that iPhones are sold in needs to put a tariff on nonlocally made products from a nonlocal company to match the absolute stupidity of Trump's logic.
TSMC is building factories in America, and Apple is the biggest customer so far. It's a similar situation for rare earth magnets. So, not just "assembly".
As to tariffs in general, you should learn about something called the "trade deficit". The other countries, such as China, already had tariffs on American products, America is simply reciprocating. If tariffs are so stupid, why do so many countries use them I wonder?
One beneficial side effect of tariffs is bringing strategic manufacturing onshore, such as...semiconductor manufacturing.
Like it or not, the US economy will grow explosively as a result of the current economic policies, after an adjustment period.
Either way, India seems like it has once again miscalculated who to side with on the world stage. Russian oil may be cheap, but Russia hasn’t been a reliable ally to any country in the past 30 years, and now India looks set to lose significant investments from the US.
So India/ China can supply other markets?
I would be curious to understand better if gay is the trigger for Apple. Is it because when they assess the various geopolitical dynamics that they conclude that this is the best thing for the company? Or did they get strong incentives (whether carrots or sticks) and that is why they’re doing it.
Apple has been directly threatened with tariffs by Trump. Currently they are exempt from the India tariffs.
The capex commitment in the US is a transactional agreement to ensure that these exceptions are kept.