Happy Thanksgiving and Why Apple won't bring back oodles of jobs to the US manufacturing sector anytime soon

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours throughout the United States. If you’re not an American, please, we’ve got plenty today. So sit down and enjoy the feast.

 

Now to the topic of my title. President-elect Trump told the New York Times that he had talked to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. He told Tim that he wants Apple to bring back manufacturing of iPhones to the US. 

Tim apparently hasn’t enthusiastically complied with Mr. Trump’s requests. I doubt that he can. I doubt that Mr. Trump’s chosen tools, the carrot of a proposed corporate tax cut and the stick of increased tariffs on imported goods from China, would do the trick in any case.

 

Apple has spent decade building up its supply chain in Asia. If Mr.Trump believes that all that effort could be uprooted and transplanted to America within his 4 year term, I feel this won’t happen. 

 

Apple and more importantly, its manufacturing contractors, would have to find and train an American  work force comparable to the current Chinese work force. 

Apple and its manufacturing contractors would have to build physical facilities to build the massive volume of iPhones. 

Most importantly, they would have to change the manufacturing processes designed for China to fit an American work force. 

 

 

Besides, who does build cell phones in the United States to begin with? Or any kind of consumer electronics? Samsung doesn’t. Hewlett-Packard doesn’t. 

 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog