Days after Apple’s chief executive met with President Trump, the company said Monday he planned to spend $ 500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the United States over the next four years and open a factory in Texas to make cars empowering push the company into artificial intelligence.
“We are bullies for the future of American innovation, and we are proud to build on our long US investments,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive in a statement. The company made similar, smaller promises during the Biden administration and Mr. Trump’s first mandate, though it has not yet pursued some of those promises.
Mr. Cook met with Mr. Trump last week. After the meeting, Mr. Trump said Apple will shift production to the United States: “They will build here because they do not want to pay the fees,” he said in a speech on a gathering of governors.
With its investment, Apple said it will begin production of artificial intelligence servers in a new 250,000 -square -foot structure in Houston next year. Those servers, which will be made by the Taiwanese Foxconn electronics giant, will help the company expand its database capacity in North Carolina, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada.
Apple will continue to do most of what sells – iPhone, iPads and Mac – in Asia. Her manufacturing trail overseas has been a point of quarrel with Mr. Trump that he was previously elected president for the first time in 2016. For years, he has called on Apple to “start building computers and things of things them cursed in this country, rather than in other countries ”
While Trump’s first administration collected tariffs in China in 2019, Apple began to relocate some of its products to Vietnam, India and other Asian countries. But that did not bring any of that production back to the United States.
Now, Apple is facing tariffs for the first time on the iPhone and threatening tariffs for other products made overseas. Most of the iPhones are made in China, and US 10 percent tariffs for all Chinese products have come into force this month. Mr. Trump has also threatened mutual tariffs on India, as well as import taxes from Canada, Mexico and other major trade partners.
Mr. Cook has worked with Mr. Trump in the past to help Apple avoid fees. The Trump administration avoided imposing intelligent phone taxes and was abolished, at Apple’s request, a fee at Apple Watch in 2020.
Gene Munster, a managing partner at the Deepwater Asset Management, said he expected Apple to be saved again from tariffs because of his promise to invest $ 500 billion in the United States.
The investment represents $ 39 billion in annual expenses on what Apple promised to spend on employees and suppliers in the United States in 2021, he said. It is in line with Apple’s average annual growth in US investment to support its growth since 2017. And the 20,000 jobs Apple said would add is in line with the number of people it would hire over a four -year period in the United States, too.
“This is a trading calculated for tariffs,” Mr. Munster. “Trump made it clear: you have to show me a little love. The question is: how much is that apple worth it? And the answer is that they would better spend this money on their own infrastructure than to give Uncle Sam. “
He added, “This is what you have to do to navigate the new world order, and Tim Cook is really good in it.”
Apple and the White House refused to comment on the issue for this article.
Apple is the latest in a series of enterprises to make investment commitments in the United States after Mr. Trump’s election. In December, Softbank, a Japanese technology company, committed to investing $ 100 billion in the United States and creating 100,000 jobs. A month later, Softbank, Openai and Oracle pledged to spend $ 500 billion over the next four years on artificial intelligence computing infrastructure.
Companies have mixed data to fulfill their promises to Mr. Trump. In 2018, Apple promised to build a campus in a new country as part of a $ 350 billion investment, but has not yet done so. That same year, her partner Foxconn held a Wisconsin striker for a $ 10 billion high -tech campus that would hire 13,000 people. Foxconn has built several buildings but not the promised plant.
But other companies like Toyota and Nucor, the American steel maker, pursued promises to invest billions of dollars by building plants in Kentucky who now hire thousands of people.
An Apple spokesman said the company’s promise was later fulfilled by opening a second camp in Austin, Texas, which he announced at the end of 2018.
In 2021, Apple said he would invest $ 1 billion in North Carolina in a new camp in the Raleigh area. Later stopped the development of the project. Last year, she said she would develop the campus in the coming years.
Apple’s promise suggests that he is getting more serious about his business, Mr. Munster. Instead of pouring tens of billions of dollars in the construction of databases such as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google, Apple has hit partnerships with OpenAi, which camps some questions on the iPhone, and rental infrastructure by providers of cloud.
To support the service called Apple Intelligence, the company has developed custom semiconductors for its servers that have been set up together on a cloud network that has been more private because it is not stored or accessible, even by Apple .
Apple’s servers being done in Houston can accelerate the company’s attempt to build that offer. Last year, Foxconn bought a land tract in the north of Houston, near one of his warehouses, which he said would be used for his artificial intelligence business.
The world’s most advanced servers depend on a complex network of companies that have passed decades developing specialized tools and processes. They contain chips made by Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing company, which produces most of the computer chips in Taiwan and depends on cars made by the Dutch company ASML.
TSMC has also expanded its production trail in the United States. In 2020, the company said it would build a factory in Arizona; She quickly announced a second and then a third in the middle of a biden administration to increase the production of US chips. But he also pushed the start of production in Arizona, saying that local workers had no expertise in installing some sophisticated equipment.
Shortly before leaving office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. completed a deal to give $ 6.6 billion in Grants for TSMC. The government said it planned to give TSMC money in installments while the company meets milestones. Apple is the largest facility client.
TSMC has already begun to make chips for Apple in Arizona.
Apple described her announcement on Monday as “the biggest commitment of her expenses”. $ 500 billion would go towards production facilities, databases and entertainment products, the company said. Apple employs more than 150,000 people worldwide.
Monday’s statement was echoed about Apple’s previous announcements.
Four years ago, a few months after Mr. Biden’s inauguration, Apple announced a “acceleration” of its investments in the US, pledge to spend $ 430 billion and add 20,000 jobs over five years. In January 2018, during Mr. Trump’s first term, the company said “its direct contribution to the American economy” would be $ 350 billion over five years and planned to create 20,000 jobs during that period.
Mr. Trump thanked Apple and Mr. Cook in a post on social media on Monday. Mr Trump said the mass indicated that the company had “trust what we are doing”.