In a recent interview with the newspaper The New York Times, the president-elect of the United States Donald Trump has affirmed that, after the communication of the results, he received phone calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Trump told Cook it would be a "real achievement" for him to get Apple to manufacture its products in the United States., rather than in countries such as China or Vietnam, where many of its current manufacturing partners such as Pegatron or Foxconn, two of the most important, operate.
I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple and I said, 'Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in America, or a lot of big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, going to Vietnam, or going to the places you go, you are making your products here.
Cook acknowledged the proposition by saying bluntly "I understand that," according to Trump.
Donald Trump in the offices of The New York Times newspaper
Trump said that confident that Apple will turn to US manufacturing based on the incentives it plans to offer to the iPhone maker, including a "very large tax cut" and "substantial regulatory cuts" for corporations.
I said, 'I think we're going to create incentives for you, and I think you're going to do it. We are going to ask for a very large tax cut for corporations, of which you will be happy. “But we are going to ask for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of the regulations, the regulations are making it impossible. Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, I could sit down and show you the regulations that anyone would agree are ridiculous […] And companies can't, can't even start, can't expand, they're drowning.
A recent report said that Apple asked its partner Foxconn to study the possibility of moving the production of the iPhone to the United States. However, Terry Gou, Foxconn president, seems to be less than enthusiastic about the idea due to the inevitable costs of production that this change would entail compared to doing it in China.
While campaigning at Liberty University in Virginia earlier this year, Trump said which "We're going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and stuff in this country instead of other countries.", while threatening to impose a 45% tax on products imported from China, an unprecedented protectionist measure in recent history, and encouraging a boycott of Apple products in the United States.
Cook previously said that Apple makes iPhones in China because the country has placed a "huge emphasis on manufacturing", while observing that the American workforce has a smaller number of individuals who have been trained in the necessary skills.
China put an emphasis on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational skills. The United States, over time, began to lose so many vocational skills. I mean, you can take each tool to America and probably put it in a room that we're sitting in. In China, you would have to have several soccer fields.
Obviously Apple, like many other companies, too benefits from lower wages in China, where many of its suppliers are located very close to each other. In Asia, Taiwan's TSMC makes A-series chips for the iPhone, Japan's Sharp and Japan Display supply displays, and Japan's SK Hynix and Toshiba produce memory chips for the device.
Apple has a manufacturing plant for the Mac Pro in Austin, Texas, operated by Flextronics, but it is a very limited effort given the relatively low production volume of this equipment.
On a personal level, Cook took a stand in favor of Hillary Clinton, organizing a fundraiser in August. In a company-wide memo issued after Trump's victory, Cook urged Apple employees to "move forward together" despite the "uncertainty."
On a corporate level, Apple showed support for the Democratic and Republican candidates during their respective campaigns, but reportedly limited its support to the 2016 Republican National Convention due to Trump's controversial comments about minorities, women, and immigrants.