A fewer days before the entry into force of the fresh trade tariffs announced by president Donald Trump, White home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that Apple might consider moving iPhone production to the United States, according to information The Verge. As an argument, she indicated an investment plan for the company worth $500 billion. According to Apple, ‘If Apple felt that this was impossible, they would most likely not have planned specified large investments in the USA’.
Leavitt besides pointed out that Trump believes that "the United States has the right resources, workforce and capabilities to produce iPhones at home".
However, over the past decade, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have repeatedly stressed that the implementation of specified a plan faces many obstacles. Jobs in an interview with Barack Obama in 2010 said Apple employs 700 000 workers in China due to the fact that it needs 30,000 engineers on site to support production – and that it is impossible to find that many in the US.
Tim Cook added in 2017 that the decision to produce in China is not due to lower labour costs, but to the availability of highly skilled specialists and modern production technologies. "In the US, it would be hard to fill the hall with engineers of precision tools, and in China you can fill all the stadiums," he said during the Global Forum of luck magazine.
Thus, despite political pressure, the relocation of iPhone production to the US inactive seems unlikely.
