President Trump says Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised 3 ‘big, beautiful’ manufacturing plants in the U.S.

“President Donald Trump on Tuesday said in an interview that Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook has committed to build three big manufacturing plants in the U.S., a surprising statement that would help fulfill his administration’s economic goal of reviving American manufacturing,” Tripp Mickle and Peter Nicholas report for The Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Trump, in a 45-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal, said Mr. Cook promised him Apple would build ‘three big plants, beautiful plants.’ Mr. Trump didn’t elaborate on where those plants would be located or when they would be built.”

“‘I spoke to [Mr. Cook], he’s promised me three big plants — big, big, big,’ Mr. Trump said as part of a discussion about business-tax reform and business investment. ‘I said you know, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success. He called me, and he said they are going forward,'” Mickle and Nicholas report. “Mr. Trump’s comments were some of the first he has made regarding Apple manufacturing since assuming the presidency and revives pressure on the world’s largest company by market value to move manufacturing operations from Asia to the U.S.”

“Apple faced criticism from Mr. Trump last year on the campaign trail for outsourcing the production of its iPhones and other devices to factories in China. After Mr. Trump won the election, he said in TIME Magazine that he told Mr. Cook that he wanted ‘Apple to build a great plant, your biggest and your best, even if it’s only a foot bigger than some place in China,'” Mickle and Nicholas report. “In May, Apple said it planned to create a $1 billion fund to invest in U.S. companies that do advanced manufacturing. ‘We’re looking at this thing deeply,’ Mr. Cook said at the time during an appearance on CNBC. ‘How do we grow our employee base? How do we grow our investor base? How do we employ [in] manufacturing?'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Via Hon Hai (Foxconn), the Softbank fund, and/or other contract manufacturers like Flex (Austin, TX) and Quanta (Fremont, CA)?

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