Experts doubt Trump line that tariffs and company’s $500bn investment will shift manufacturing from Asia

The White House is insisting that Donald Trump’s vision of Apple’s flagship iPhones being manufactured in the US will come to fruition, despite assertions from analysts and the company itself that it would not be possible.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters during Tuesday’s briefing that the president believed Apple’s recently announced $500bn investment, as well as increasing import costs sparked by his trade tariffs, would encourage the company to ramp up manufacturing in the US.

“He believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. If Apple didn’t think the US could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” she said.

  • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    3 days ago

    I’m not smart enough to come up with a way to attack the profits made by exploiting cheap labor in other markets, but maybe something like a global minimum wage that lifts up workers in other countries while not giving CEOs as much incentive to do it.

    I haven’t heard this idea before and I really like it. You want to have your product manufactured by minimum wage workers in Cambodia? Sure, go ahead. But you’ll be paying them the minimum wage from your business’ home country, not theirs, and then paying shipping afterward to move your items to the sale location so it doesn’t actually benefit the business to abuse sweatshop labor rates.