Trump wants iPhones made in the U.S. Here are the facts
The obstacles involved with moving production away from China and India are immense
U.S. President Donald Trump has once again threatened Apple with punishing tariffs, this time at 25 per cent. The move is intended to pressure Apple into making iPhones in the U.S.
Trump has grown increasingly annoyed at Apple for its plan to shift production to India from China, where most iPhones are currently made. Addressing CEO Tim Cook, Trump said, "We're not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves."
Apple did announce in February that it will build a huge new factory in Texas and hire 20,000 people in the U.S. over the next four years, a $500 billion investment. But none of that is to build iPhones.
Are any parts of the iPhone made in the U.S.?
Yes, some pieces are. The most noticeable component is the glass that protects the screen, which is made by Corning. Some production is in Kentucky, but also at Corning's overseas plants.
An iPhone has more than 2,000 parts sourced from dozens of countries. Many of them cannot be made domestically.
In some cases the raw materials (like rare earth minerals) don't exist in the U.S. In other cases, the parts are only available from certain suppliers. iPhones require some of the most sophisticated chips in the world, all of which are made in Taiwan. Could that be moved to the U.S.? Possibly, but the time estimate on that ranges from years to decades.
What about assembly of the phones?
After the long decline of manufacturing in the U.S., there is now a lack of infrastructure, skill and expertise, a point made repeatedly not just by Apple, but also other American companies that make stuff in China.
Molson Hart, the CEO of Viahart, an educational toy company, laid it out in detail.
His products are made by molding plastic into shapes. Those molding machines don't exist in the U.S. Even if they did, there would be no one to adjust them when needs change, or to fix them when they break down, because hardly anyone in the U.S. knows how to do that anymore.
Similarly, Apple's manufacturing facilities use precision cutting machines and other sophisticated tools that require skilled people to service them.
Apple's Tim Cook once said in an interview that all the tooling engineers in America might fit in one room. In China, there are so many they could fill football stadiums.
Would Americans even want to do the work?
This has been a lingering question that the U.S. Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, tried to address on CBS's Face The Nation on April 6.
"The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America."
Lutnick was widely ridiculed for that statement. China even released AI-generated videos of overweight Americans awkwardly toiling over tiny parts in factories.
But let's consider the facts of actual iPhone manufacturing facilities. The phones are assembled by Foxconn, the huge Chinese company Apple has worked with for many years.
Working conditions and alleged abuses at Foxconn's plants in China have been well-documented. Even without the allegations of mistreatment, shifts are 10 to 12 hours long, often six days a week and involve incredibly repetitive tasks.
On the issue of the tiny screws, one man described having to install 1,200 of them in a typical shift. If he took a bathroom break, he'd have to make up for the lost time.
Foxconn's new facility near the Indian city of Bengaluru is partially operational now. When it reaches full capacity in 2027 it will employ 50,000 people.
According to India's Economic Times, the site will also include 30,000 dormitories for staff. In other words, many employees won't just work at the factory, they will also live there for prolonged periods of time. Foxconn has always done this, saying it's essential to operations.
Would an American iPhone factory include dormitories? No one has answered that question.
Then there's the issue of pay
According to a Reuters investigation published last year, Foxconn in India offers employees food, accommodation and $200 a month, or around $2,400 a year, roughly in line with India's per capita GDP ($2,480 according to the World Bank).
If you use the same benchmark for what American workers would be paid at a U.S. plant, they would get a wage in the range of $82,769, the current per capita GDP.
Apple has not committed to building iPhones in the U.S., so there's no way of knowing what it would pay staff to do it, but it would certainly be dramatically higher than in India or China.
What would that do to the cost of an iPhone?
It's impossible to say precisely.
A new iPhone 16 currently costs $799 US.
With the tariffs that were applied to China in April, UBS, the Swiss Bank, estimated the price would rise to more than $1,400. Those tariffs were scaled back earlier this month, but only for 90 days. It's unclear whether Trump will raise them again.
Trying to guess the price of an iPhone if it's made in the U.S. is far more difficult. Some industry analysts have thrown around a figure of $3,500 or more, but the variables and time scales involved make it impossible to say for sure.
One fact no one disputes? The price surely wouldn't stay the same.
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