Trump believes iPhones can be made in the US, says White House
1 min read
Summary
When questioned as to whether Trump actually believes that Apple products could be manufactured in the US, rather than simply assembled there, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “absolutely”, claiming that the US has the required labour and resources.
However, Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, and current CEO, Tim Cook, have repeatedly argued over the past decade that the shortage of skilled engineers in the US would prevent this from being possible.
In 2010, Jobs told then-President Barack Obama that Apple required 30,000 engineers to support its Chinese factory workers, noting that “you can’t find that many in America to hire”.
In a separate interview in 2017, Cook agreed that it was China’s engineering skill set that was the key factor in manufacturing, rather than cheap labour, stating “in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room…in China you could fill multiple football fields”.