Trump says Apple's Cook promised to move manufacturing from Mexico to U.S.
Apple CEO Tim Cook met with President Donald Trump at the White House this week and according to the president, Cook made some huge promises. Speaking to a group of governors, Trump said that Cook told him that Apple will shift some manufacturing from Mexico to the United States. On Friday, Trump said that Cook "stopped two plants in Mexico" and will build products in the U.S. instead.
It isn't clear which manufacturing facilities Trump was talking about since Apple doesn't produce many finished products in Mexico. It certainly doesn't build any iPhone models in the country although it does obtain some parts from Mexico.
If this all sounds too familiar, you might recall that in 2017, during his first term, Trump said "I spoke to [Mr. Cook], he’s promised me three big plants—big, big, big. I said you know, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success. He called me, and he said they are going forward." The only problem with this story is that a few years after the conversation supposedly happened, Apple denied that new plants were ever being considered.
But that was then and this is now. Trump and Cook met in Washington on Thursday. The president added that Cook promised him that Apple would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. Trump also made a comment about Apple not wanting to get hit by a 25% tariff on Mexican exports to the U.S. Tariffs are import taxes that U.S. companies pay to import certain products from a targeted country. Apple would have to decide whether to pay the tariff itself or pass the additional costs on to consumers in the form of a price hike.
It is important to understand that when the U.S. places tariffs on a country, that country pays absolutely nothing to the U.S. Only corporations and consumers in the states pay for tariffs imposed on U.S. trading partners by the White House.
Foxconn, the contract manufacturer that is the largest manufacturer employed by Apple to assemble the iPhone, does have a growing manufacturing presence in the country. At the start of this month, Mexico said it agreed to send 10,000 members of the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexican border to prevent fentanyl from getting smuggled from Mexico to the states." As a result, the U.S. has temporarily paused imposing tariffs on Mexican imports.
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