Trump Offers Tim Cook Tax Cuts to Make iPhone in the USA

A day ago, President Elect Donald Trump said in an interview with The New York Times that he had received a calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Now, if you’ve been wondering what the two discussed, the NYT has the answer (via ZDNET).

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The NYT has published the full transcript of the Donald Trump interview, which gives us some insight into what Trump and Cook discussed. According to Trump, he pledged Cook to bring back manufacturing to the US:

“Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.”

Cook replied, as quoted by Trump:

“I understand that.”

But the president-elect outlined some of the incentives he would offer to make this possible.

I think we’ll create the incentives for you, and I think you’re going to do it. We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.’

However, manufacturing Apple products in the US would add another $30 to $40 in costs, according to Jason Dedrick, a professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. Apple shut down its US manufacturing line in Elk Grove, laying off 235 full-time workers in 2004. By this time, most of Apple’s manufacturing was taking place in Chinese factories.

Back in 2012, Tim Cook said in an interview that Apple would invest more than $100 million a year to boost manufacturing in the US: Starting in 2013, Flextronics assembled Macs in Austin, Texas. Apple has also poured $578 million into GT Advanced to supply equipment for a sapphire glass factory that was planned to be opened in Mesa, Arizona. You may already know what happened there.

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