Donald Trump wants a US-made iPhone, but is that an impossible dream?

Donald Trump considers the pinnacle of his ‘Make America Great Again’ pledge a US-made iPhone. But Apple is unlikely to fulfil the President’s wishes soon, if ever. Here’s why.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook says manufacturing in China is about the concentration of skill rather than cost. Picture: Apple

Donald Trump considers the pinnacle of his ‘Make America Great Again’ pledge a US-made iPhone. But Apple is unlikely to fulfil the President’s wishes soon – if ever.

And Mr Trump’s trade war antics – which he says aims to cut down debt and spur US manufacturing – has provided plenty of fodder for internet memes.

The two most popular circulating are overweight and tired-looking Americans fumbling with assembling iPhones and other products, and from stitching Nike runners together to making T-shirts.

But, like all great comedy, or tragedy, there is an element of truth, and China – where the memes are thought to have originated from – is having a field day.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Apple assembles most of its products in China and chief executive Tim Cook had hoped to avoid tariffs, being one of the many US tech bosses to pay homage to Trump – even dining with the President at Mar-a-Lago, his ‘winter White House’ in Florida.

You can see why. Apple shares dived as much as 23 per cent after Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs against China. It has become a high-stakes showdown between the two super powers, with each firing more shots with each day, in what my colleague Will Glasgow said was metronome-like.

Late on Friday (US time) the White House exempted products such as smartphones, laptop computers, memory chips and other tech-essential products from Chinese tariffs. But those exemptions are only a temporary reprieve, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned.

One of the online memes mocking Trump's plan to resurrect US manufacturing.

Trump claims the US has been “raped” and “pillaged” by trading partners, with Beijing the worst offender.

But, Cook has argued previously the US doesn’t have a skilled enough workforce to make iPhones and MacBooks – hence the memes of Americans fumbling on production lines. Indeed, one of Trump’s most loyal advisers, Elon Musk has recalled more than 46,000 of his Tesla Cybertrucks because of the potential for an exterior panel to fall off.

“We want to make things in the scale of hundreds of millions, and we want the quality level of zero defect,” Cook told Fortune magazine in 2017.

That explains why resurrecting manufacturing in the US will be incredibly challenging.

It’s much like Australia suddenly deciding to make cars again after the auto industry closed its doors locally a decade ago. Where will you get the workforce from and how will you upskill staff? About 650,000 tech workers will be needed in Australia alone by the end of the decade.

One of the online memes that are mocking Trump's plan to resurrect US manufacturing.

And leaders of both political parties – like Trump – want to cut immigration, which is widely seen as a way of helping meet the shortfall.

But Cook, who was integral to Apple’s ‘designed in California, assembled in China’ approach decades ago, says America would struggle to find the skilled workers necessary to perform the level of precision that advanced manufacturing demands.

Therefore, manufacturing in China is not about slashing labour costs.

“There’s a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labour costs. I’m not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is, China stopped being the low labour cost country many years ago,” Cook told Fortune in the same interview.

“The tooling skill is very deep here. You know, in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It’s that vocational. Vocational expertise is very deep, very, very deep here, and I give the education system a credit for continuing to push on that, even when others were de-emphasising vocational.

“Now I think many countries in the world woke up and said ‘this is a key thing, and we’ve got to correct that’. But China called that right from the beginning.”

Chinese workers in the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, making iPhones. Picture: AFP

Cook is not alone in his assessment. Billionaire investor Howard Marks, of Oaktree Capital, said the US also doesn’t have sufficient advanced manufacturing capacity.

Marks said there “aren’t enough skilled workers available in the US to take the place of all those in China and the developing world who presently make goods for us”.

“In most cases, there isn’t sufficient manufacturing capacity that can be switched on,” he said.

“The new factories designed to bring back manufacturing jobs would take years to permit and build, and the cost of construction would have to be justified by an expectation of profits many years out in the future.

“This adds further complexity to decisions that had already been made challenging by uncertainty regarding future developments in automation and AI. Are CEOs likely to commit to those investments based on tariffs that might be subject to renegotiation?”

Apple now plans to assemble more iPhones in India, which also has a large manufacturing workforce, to bypass the crippling tariffs Trump has slapped on China.

So it’s unlikely that Trump will receive his wish.