Days after the Chief Executive of Apple met President Trump, the company said on Monday that it was planning to spend $ 500 billion and to hire 20,000 people in the United States in the next four years and to open a factory in Texas to the Making machines that promote the push of the company in artificial intelligence.
“We are bullish about the future of American innovation, and we are proud to build on our long -standing American investments,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in a statement. The company has made comparable, smaller commitments during the BIDEN administration and the first term of Mr Trump, although it has not yet followed on some of those promises.
Mr. Cook met Trump. After that meeting, Mr Trump said that Apple would move production to the United States: “They are going to build here instead because they do not want to pay the rates,” he said in a speech to a Governors' meeting.
With his investment, Apple said it would start with producing artificial intelligence servers in a new 250,000 square feet facility in Houston next year. Those servers, which will be made by the Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, will help the company to expand his data center capacity in North Carolina, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada.
Apple remains in Asia to continue to make most of what it sells – iPhones, iPads and Macs. The footprint of overseas production has been a point of a shame with Mr Trump since he was first chosen in 2016. For years he called on Apple 'to build their damn computers and things in this country, rather than in other countries. “
While the first Trump administration increased rates on China in 2019, Apple began to move part of the production to Vietnam, India and other Asian countries. But it brought nothing of that production back to the United States.
Now Apple is confronted for the first time with rates on iPhones and the threat of rates for other products made abroad. Most iPhones are made in China and the American rates of 10 percent on all Chinese products are in force this month. Mr. Trump has also threatened mutual rates for India, as well as levies in the field of import from Canada, Mexico and other large trading partners.
Mr. Cook has with Mr. Trump worked to help Apple avoid rates. The Trump administration avoided placing taxes on smartphones and removed a rate on the Apple Watch in 2020 at the request of Apple.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said he expected that Apple would be saved from rates again because of his promise to invest $ 500 billion in the United States.
The investment represents $ 39 billion in annual spending over what Apple promised to spend to employees and suppliers in the United States in 2021, he said. It is in line with the average annual increase in Apple's American investments to support growth since 2017. And the 20,000 jobs that Apple said would add are in line with the number of people it would hire over a period of four years in the United States, too.
“This is a calculated assessment for rates,” said Mr. Munster. 'Trump has made it clear: you have to show me some love. The question is: how much is that Apple worth? And the answer is that they would rather spend this money on infrastructure than to give it to Uncle Sam. '
He added: “This is what you have to do to navigate through the new world order, and Tim Cook is really good at it.”
Apple and the White House did not immediately comment.
Apple is the last in a series of companies that connect investment obligations in the United States after the elections of Mr Trump. In December, Softbank, a Japanese technology company, promised to invest $ 100 billion in the United States and 100,000 jobs. A month later, Softbank, OpenAi and Oracle promised to spend $ 500 billion on the computer infrastructure for artificial intelligence for the next four years.
Companies have mixed information about fulfilling their promises to Mr Trump. In 2018, Apple promised to build a campus at a new location as part of an investment of $ 350 billion, but that has not yet done this. In the same year, the partner Foxconn held a pioneering in Wisconsin for a high -tech campus of $ 10 billion that 13,000 people would have employed. Foxconn has built some buildings, but not the promised factory.
But other companies such as Toyota and Nucor, the American steel producer, followed on promises to invest billions of dollars by building factories in Kentucky that now employ thousands of people.
In 2021, Apple said it would invest $ 1 billion in North Carolina on a new campus in the Raleigh area. It later paused the development of the project. Last year it said it would develop the campus in the coming years.
Apple's promise suggests that it will be more serious about his AI activities, Mr. Munster said. Instead of pouring dozens of billions of dollars to build data centers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google, Apple has put partnerships with OpenAI, which promotes some AI queries on iPhones and rented computer infrastructure of cloud providers.
In order to support the AI service called Apple Intelligence, the company has developed adapted semiconductors for its servers strung together in a cloud network that has said it is more private because it is not stored or accessible, even by Apple.
The Apple servers made in Houston can speed up the efforts of the company to build that AI offer. Last year Foxconn bought a piece of land north of Houston, next to one of his warehouses, of which it would be used for his artificial intelligence company.
The most advanced AI servers in the world depend on a complicated network of companies that have spent decades on developing specialized tools and processes. They contain chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which produces most advanced computer chips in Taiwan and is made dependent on machines made by the Dutch company ASML.
TSMC has also expanded its production print printing in the United States. In 2020 the company said it would build a factory in Arizona; It quickly announced a second and then a third in the midst of a push of the Biden administration to stimulate American chip production. But it also pushed back the start of production in Arizona and said that local employees had no expertise in installing some advanced equipment.
Shortly before he left his office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. An agreement to grant $ 6.6 billion in subsidies to TSMC. The government said it was planning to give TSMC the money in tranches, since the company meets milestones. Apple is the largest customer of the facility.
TSMC has already started making chips for Apple in Arizona.
Apple described its announcement on Monday as his 'biggest expenses ever'. The $ 500 billion would go to production facilities, data centers and entertainment productions, the company said. Apple employs more than 150,000 people around the world.
Monday's statement had Echos from earlier Apple announcements.
Four years ago, a few months after Mr Biden's inauguration, Apple announced an “acceleration” of his American investments, promised to spend $ 430 billion and add 20,000 jobs in five years. In January 2018, during Mr. Trump's first term, the company said that his “direct contribution to the US economy” would be $ 350 billion in five years and that it was planning to create 20,000 jobs during that period.
Mr. Trump thanked Apple and Mr. Cook in a social media post on Monday. Mr. Trump said that the move showed that the company had 'confidence in what we do'.
