Apple, under pressure from Trump, says it's boosting U.S. investment

NBC News

15 hours ago

Apple said Wednesday that it would expand its planned investment in the United States as it faces pressure from President Donald Trump to shift its supply chain to American soil.
The splashy announcement came hours before Trump's wave of country-specific tariffs were set to go into effect. The president's levy barrage isn't over yet. He said Tuesday that shortly he will be announcing tariffs on semiconductors, which could affect iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and other popular Apple products.
The announcement came as Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the White House to speak about the investment alongside Trump.
The tech giant said it will manufacture the glass covers on all iPhones and Apple Watch devices sold worldwide in in the United States. Apple said manufacturing firm Corning will produce that glass at its Harrodsburg, Kentucky plant under a $2.5 billion commitment.
"Apple will massively increase spending on its domestic supply chain for the iPhone, and will build the largest and most sophisticated smart glass production line in the world," Trump said.
That plant has been producing glass products for over 60 years, according to a post on Corning's website. In 2021, Apple said Corning already supplied glass for iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad. Apple also said at the time that 'every generation of iPhone glass has been made' at the plant named in Wednesday's announcement.
Apple supplier Applied Materials also announced that it would invest $200 million in an Arizona factory that manufactures chip-making equipment. That equipment will be used by Texas Instruments, another Apple supplier, to make some semiconductors used in Apple's products.
Apple said the glass manufacturing announcement was part of a $600 billion commitment to bring parts of its supply chains to the U.S. Previously, the company had vowed to invest $500 billion over the next four years.
"Apple will also build a 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility in Houston, and invest billions of dollars to construct data centers across the country from North Carolina to Iowa to Oregon," Trump also said.
However, Wednesday's announcement doesn't mean manufacturing or assembly of any of the company's major products, such as the iPhone, iPad or MacBook, will come to the states.
Most of Apple's most popular products are currently exempt from tariffs while the Commerce Department conducts a so-called Section 232 investigation to determine the national security impact of importing those products and their parts. Despite the exemptions, Apple took an $800 million hit in the last quarter from tariffs and predicted it will take another $1.5 billion hit in the next three months.
In a May social media post, Trump said: 'I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone's that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.'
Apple's investment bears some similarities to recent announcements from the president. OpenAI, Oracle and Japan's Softbank collectively pledged $500 billion to invest in building out data centers across the country to power artificial intelligence applications.
But months after being announced the plans reportedly hit some snags. The three firms said they would 'immediately' begin investing but now the plans call for just one small data center in Ohio by the end of the year.
A trade agreement between the Trump administration and the European Union included what they said would be $600 billion of investments in the United States and $750 billion of energy purchases.
'They gave me $600 billion, and that's a gift,' Trump said on CNBC Tuesday. 'They gave us $600 billion that we can invest in anything we want.'
However, the E.U. said in a statement that European companies have only 'expressed interest in investing at least $600 billion.' The E.U. does not have any mechanism in place to incentivize those investments. Similarly, the E.U. has said $750 billion is only a projection of potential energy purchases over the next 3 years.