They're cursory gestures at best, and stark condemnations of US manufacturing capacity at worst. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro are not complex or dense electronics in the slightest. They're carrier enclosures for TSMC technology, you could probably make them in Siberia if you wanted to.

The hard part is manufacturing Apple's high-volume hardware, namely the iPhone. That is not anywhere close to being onshored, and Apple seemingly has no interest in even attempting it if Indian labor is still an option.

As Tim Cook put it: "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..."

Currying favor with fascists is NOT good. What has meaningfully changed for onshoring to make sense economically? Nothing. All that's happened is an executive came into power who threatens tariffs and other retaliatory action via the DOJ / DHS / FCC if you don't do what Trump says. It's embarrassing and frankly insane that our business leaders continue to stay silent, have dinners at the Whitehouse, and put out puff pieces like this.

Mark Zuckerberg made up pledged "investment" numbers on the spot at one of their dinners and was caught on hot mic admitting it. This is hilariously corrupt and will not result in a US manufacturing boom.

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Because it’s important to have the domestic capacity to build the most sophisticated products. Political power is downstream of manufacturing capacity. The countries that have sophisticated enough centrifuges that they can refine weapons grade plutonium derive an incredible amount of political power from that fact.

Remember that, after World War I, the U.S. had most demobilized its military. The Japanese had more aircraft carriers than the U.S. in 1941. That’s why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor—it thought it could win!

But while the U.S. was weak militarily, it had been the largest industrial producer since the late 19th century. Within a couple of years of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had built a bigger air force and navy than the rest of the world combined.

That’s why it’s better to be able to make Mac Minis in Houston. Because you can repurpose those facilities to produce electronics for warships instead of having to buy parts from countries you might be at war with.

Not without a big beautiful bribe [1] I assume

[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...

Legally no, but in practice the president has been trying to assert the power to unilaterally levy taxes, even in spite of the supreme court ruling that you need the legislature to pass a tax. People still paid the tariffs. I would be extremely suprised if that's the only place this admin is trying to tax by fiat, and tax policy enforcemetn is far less visible than consumer tariffs.

Isn't that the whole point of the tariff? To incentivize US investment?

No. But you have to understand that American political rhetoric only allows for things to be made either in the US or China (and occasionally Mexico). In that framework, yes the US is the most expensive place to make things.