Donald Trump’s investments include Apple, other companies he bashes

“Donald Trump has invested in some of the companies that he uses as punching bags on the campaign trail, according to new financial documents he submitted to the U.S. government,” Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day report for The Associated Press. “”

“In his 104-page public financial disclosure report, the presumptive Republican nominee reported holding investments in companies like Ford Motor Co., Apple Inc. and the parent company of the maker of Oreo cookies — all businesses that he’s assailed for outsourcing [and] in Apple’s case, not agreeing to crack into iPhones for police or federal law enforcement in criminal cases,” Horwitz and Day report. “Trump also has invested in other companies that have outsourced jobs but escaped his public shaming.”

“One of Trump’s main talking points during his campaign rallies is that as president he would stop the outflow of American jobs. He often calls out companies and their products by name. The investments make up only a tiny fraction of Trump’s reported net worth, and a comparison with his previous filings show he’s reduced his holdings in some of the companies he targets,” Horwitz and Day report. “‘Who do they think they are?’ Trump said of Apple in February, when the company balked at hacking an iPhone used by one of the two people in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. More recently, Trump pledged to make Apple ‘build their damn computers and things in this country.’ Trump holds multiple investments in Apple, which combined are worth between $1.1 million and $2.25 million.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: We can’t imagine much demand for $580/month iPhone assembly jobs (that will be replaced by robots within 3-5 years anyway), however Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, estimates that an iPhone that was assembled in the U.S. versus one that was assembled in China would cost around $50 more.

“‘You wouldn’t be building everything here overnight,’ Wiens added, ‘but if you started slowly and moved 10 percent of your manufacturing to the US each year,’ pretty soon Apple could have a significant percentage of its products assembled in the US — assuming Tim Cook and co. are OK with higher US assembly wages,” Nicholas Deleon reports for Motherboard. “Apple may even have a head start, given that it already assembles the Mac Pro here in the US.”

How much more per iPhone would you be willing to pay, if anything, if it were assembled in the U.S. as opposed to China?