Eshu Marneedi

From the Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.

“We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”

As part of this package of U.S. investments, Apple and partners will open a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers that support Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done. Apple will also double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers, and grow its research and development investments in the U.S. to support cutting-edge fields like silicon engineering.

Cook is a con artist whose masterful swindling hasn’t proven it will pay off over a month into President Trump’s second term. Make no mistake: This is just another instance of Apple’s politicking that comes around every four years to placate the new administration for some favorable business terms. This time, it’s all about the 10 percent China tariff already in place and eating into Apple’s margins; last time, it was about dodging the ire of Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under former President Joe Biden. From April 2021, also on Apple Newsroom, just three months after Biden’s inauguration:

Apple today announced an acceleration of its US investments, with plans to make new contributions of more than $430 billion and add 20,000 new jobs across the country over the next five years. Over the past three years, Apple’s contributions in the US have significantly outpaced the company’s original five-year goal of $350 billion set in 2018. Apple is now raising its level of commitment by 20 percent over the next five years, supporting American innovation and driving economic benefits in every state. This includes tens of billions of dollars for next-generation silicon development and 5G innovation across nine US states.

“At this moment of recovery and rebuilding, Apple is doubling down on our commitment to US innovation and manufacturing with a generational investment reaching communities across all 50 states,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re creating jobs in cutting-edge fields — from 5G to silicon engineering to artificial intelligence — investing in the next generation of innovative new businesses, and in all our work, building toward a greener and more equitable future.”

Sounds familiar, except this time, the announcement is much more artificial intelligence-coded, while 2021’s announcement was all about 5G. In 2021, Apple announced an all-new campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, pledging to invest $1 billion in the campus and associated jobs themselves while also spending $100 million on schools in the state. According to the news, Apple postponed the North Carolina campus indefinitely last June despite apparently owning enough land to begin building. Now, Apple is “announcing” an “advanced manufacturing facility” in Houston — which will presumably cost much of that $500 million — and if history is predictive, it will go the way of the Raleigh headquarters from four years ago. Sounds like a successful business endeavor.

Meanwhile, also from Apple’s press release on Monday, the company is planning to add 20,000 new jobs over the next four years, and it also wonderfully touted how many billions of dollars it paid in U.S. taxes. I wonder who these numbers are for. But Apple already adds 5,000 jobs a year, as evidenced by Apple’s use of the exact same number in the 2021 press release:

Apple is on track to meet its 2018 goal of creating 20,000 new jobs in the US by 2023. With today’s new commitment, Apple is setting a target of creating 20,000 additional jobs in states across the country over the next five years.

None of what Apple posted on Monday is new, but that doesn’t stop Trump from taking credit for it.¹ And why would Cook correct Trump when it’s in his best interests to shut up and bend the knee further? The plan of obsequiousness isn’t working — the iPhone 16e from last week is 12 percent more expensive than the previous model, which is almost certainly a taste of what to expect come September when the flagship iPhone models are announced. That Texas plant isn’t going to reduce costs, either, because (a) it never will exist, and (b) Apple has no reason to invest so much into a U.S. facility without any subsidies from the federal government.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which produces, or fabricates, Apple’s Arm-based custom silicon, built a fab in Arizona over two years thanks to Biden’s Chips and Science Act, which provided a boatload of funding to kickstart the project. Even so, the project only produces 4-nanometer processors — not the 3-nm ones Apple uses in its latest devices. Now, the Chips Act, like much of the federal government, is in the hands of Elon Musk, a purported “adviser” to Trump whose sole interest is to enrich himself and give his companies as much federal spending as possible without letting anyone else benefit from Americans’ tax money. Apple has no fiscal interest in manufacturing its products in the United States for at least the next four years, and probably longer since the Democrat who occupies the Oval Office in 2029 will probably be more focused on ensuring a speedy recovery from Trump and Musk’s shenanigans.

Here’s what Apple had to say in its nonsense press release about the Arizona TSMC plant:

The fund’s expansion includes a multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple is the largest customer at this state-of-the-art facility, which employs more than 2,000 workers to manufacture the chips in the United States. Mass production of Apple chips began last month.

But the passage has no mention of the Chips and Science Act at all, which was central to the construction of the facility, to begin with, because that would anger Trump’s camp and negate the whole point of the flattery puff piece. It doesn’t explain how federal subsidies would be crucial to ensuring manufacturing remains in the United States, it fails to mention how backing away from Taiwan weakens American companies, and it wouldn’t dare to ever state how taking Russia’s side in a brutal, three-year-long war with Ukraine only results in China’s power over our economy. There is no constructive feedback or criticism in this statement — no ideas, no concepts, and no plans for the future of American innovation. It is a simple regurgitation and reworking of a years-old template stashed in a Pages document on someone’s Mac at Apple.

I don’t care who’s in the Oval Office: If Apple is serious about American manufacturing, it should have a proper meeting with the federal government destroying every aspect of investment and work put in over the last four years. China is so proficient in manufacturing cheaply because it subsidizes the slave labor found in Foxconn factories. TSMC makes the most money in Taiwan because the Taiwanese government knows how important TSMC is to its economy. The U.S. government, meanwhile, is emboldening its biggest adversaries for cheap bribes while stealing congressionally appropriated money from rightful American businesses and putting it in the hands of a kleptocratic billionaire narcissist. And Cook seems to be perfectly fine with this new reality, which makes complete sense coming from the most spineless Silicon Valley mogul.