Rumours: Apple iPhone to be made in the USA in the future?

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If you paid attention to the USA election this year, you'd remember that President-elect Donal Trump mentioned in his speech at Liberty University in Virginia earlier this year saying "We're going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries.". Also, he also threatened to introduce a 45% tax on products imported from China. Haha, what a joke...and will Apple do it?

According to Japanese website Nikkei Asian Review, they said that Foxconn, one of Apple's manufacturing partners is actually considering moving their iPhone production to the USA, but on the contrary, Foxconn chairman Terry Gao is not so enthusiastic about Trump's demands because in an economic sense, having an item made in the USA is definitely priced higher than in China.

On the other hand, Apple CEO Tim Cook also doesn't share his sentiments with Trump's idea either, as he previously told 60 Minutes in an interview why they choose China, not because of lower wages (yeah right lol) but because of "skill", as he said that China emphasizes on an "enormous force on manufacturing" compared to the U.S. that has a smaller volume.

"China put an enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we're currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields." said Cook.

To back up on why it's silly for Apple to manufacture their devices in the USA, an industry executive told Nikkei that Apple suppliers cannot just simply move to there as Trump wish; this is because TSMC from Taiwan makes A-series chips for iPhones, the displays are from Sharp in Japan, and the memory chips are coming from both South Korea (SK Hynix) and Japan (Toshiba).

"To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the U.S. does not have at the moment," the executive said.

"Even if Trump imposes a 45% tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the U.S."

TSMC and Sharp might consider the move because it would be a blow to lose Apple as a customer, but if they do so, then the iPhones and other Apple products will be marked at a higher price. Things are uncertain for now, but until then, stay tuned for more news at Technave.com.

[Source]