No. In the BusinessWeek interview this quote is pulled from [1], it's clear he's referring to wanting other companies to emulate Apple's increased transparency in supplier relationships and working conditions. In a follow-up question, he says:

"Our transparency in supplier responsibility is an example of recognizing that the more transparent we are, the bigger difference we would make. We want to be as innovative with supply responsibility as we are with our products. That’s a high bar. The more transparent we are, the more it’s in the public space. The more it’s in the public space, the more other companies will decide to do something similar. And the more everybody does it, the better everything gets.

It’s a recognition that we need to be supersecretive in one part about our products and our road maps. But there are other areas where we will be completely transparent so we can make the biggest difference."

[1] http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/85170-tim-cooks...

One possibility is that they know they can dominate the supply chain so effectively, they can make more per unit than a competitor could if they (the competitor) followed suit.

Similar to when Gmail came out and people were blown away that they offered 100MB of storage, and everyone (Yahoo, Hotmail) had to step up despite their far larger userbase. Then, when they finally matched Google, Google raised their cap to 1GB.

In this case, manufacturers will have to work hard to match Apple's bring-mfg-to-the-US actions, but won't even be on the same playing field, since Apple's worked so hard to maximize the efficiency of their supply chain.

I thought it was more a tongue in cheek "this is what other companies should copy from us" rather than anything else.

Why shouldn't Apple protect its intellectual property? The game is what it is until Congress changes it, not Apple.

Yes, very interesting. This was my first thought, unfortunately.