Early this morning a press release crossed the wires saying that Apple is going to spend $500 billion in the US. Here’s the TL:DR:
Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.
And:
As part of this package of U.S. investments, Apple and partners will open a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers that support Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done. Apple will also double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers, and grow its research and development investments in the U.S. to support cutting-edge fields like silicon engineering.
A couple of random thoughts on this.
First, I don’t see anything related to making Apple products in the US. That’s interesting because Donald Trump has threatened to slap a 10% import tariff on Chinese made goods. Which you would think is a problem if you’re Apple seeing as a lot of your tech is made in China. Thus on this front it appears to be business as usual for Apple. By that I mean that Apple is slowly transition its supply chain out of China to places like India for example where iPhones are now being made. Besides, even if Apple wanted to make products in the US, it’s likely way more expensive to do so due to the cost of labor, assuming they can find the requisite labor, and the the need to build the infrastructure to support that.
Second, I wonder how much of this is to take the attention of Trump away from Apple? Trump has a ridiculously short attention span. So Tim Cook must be gambling on the fact that if he puts a big dollar amount out there with a huge… Or the way Trump says it, “YUGE” number of jobs, Trump will say job done and look at the next shiny object and leave Apple alone. At least for the next four years. And it’s clear that this is only meant to be in place for as long as Trump is around. And it also assumes that he’s not going to something like end democracy in the US to stay in power. But I’m not going down that rabbit hole today.
Here’s the bottom line. Tim Cook might have pulled off a move that will allow Apple to continue to be Apple with little to no interference from Trump. That assumes that Trump doesn’t realize, or more likely someone tells him that that he’s being played like a violin. I say that because Cook did something similar the last time Trump was in power. And that worked. Thus I suspect that this move by Apple will work as well.
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This entry was posted on February 24, 2025 at 9:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Apple Is Spending $500 Billion In The US Over The Next Four Years… Why?
Early this morning a press release crossed the wires saying that Apple is going to spend $500 billion in the US. Here’s the TL:DR:
Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.
And:
As part of this package of U.S. investments, Apple and partners will open a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers that support Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done. Apple will also double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers, and grow its research and development investments in the U.S. to support cutting-edge fields like silicon engineering.
A couple of random thoughts on this.
First, I don’t see anything related to making Apple products in the US. That’s interesting because Donald Trump has threatened to slap a 10% import tariff on Chinese made goods. Which you would think is a problem if you’re Apple seeing as a lot of your tech is made in China. Thus on this front it appears to be business as usual for Apple. By that I mean that Apple is slowly transition its supply chain out of China to places like India for example where iPhones are now being made. Besides, even if Apple wanted to make products in the US, it’s likely way more expensive to do so due to the cost of labor, assuming they can find the requisite labor, and the the need to build the infrastructure to support that.
Second, I wonder how much of this is to take the attention of Trump away from Apple? Trump has a ridiculously short attention span. So Tim Cook must be gambling on the fact that if he puts a big dollar amount out there with a huge… Or the way Trump says it, “YUGE” number of jobs, Trump will say job done and look at the next shiny object and leave Apple alone. At least for the next four years. And it’s clear that this is only meant to be in place for as long as Trump is around. And it also assumes that he’s not going to something like end democracy in the US to stay in power. But I’m not going down that rabbit hole today.
Here’s the bottom line. Tim Cook might have pulled off a move that will allow Apple to continue to be Apple with little to no interference from Trump. That assumes that Trump doesn’t realize, or more likely someone tells him that that he’s being played like a violin. I say that because Cook did something similar the last time Trump was in power. And that worked. Thus I suspect that this move by Apple will work as well.
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This entry was posted on February 24, 2025 at 9:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.