14 DAY TRIAL // Apple seems to at least consider moving production to the United States following President-elect Donald Trump’s push for domestic manufacturing operations, but it looks like Cupertino might have a hard time convincing its suppliers to do the same thing.
Citing a report posted by Chinese media, Digitimes notes that China-based suppliers aren’t planning to follow Apple should the company decide to move production to the United States, citing the increased costs as the main reason.
Lens Technology, which - according to the report - is in charge of manufacturing cover glass that Apple uses on its iPhones, has already said that it’s not planning to transfer its operations to the United States, explaining that labor supply would be substantially higher than in China.
The company explained that most of its workforce is less than 45 years old, while in the United States, employees would be over this age and, at the same time, ask for bigger wages. Furthermore, the firm says, many workers in the United States are unlikely to accept its working schedules.
Tim Cook and Donald Trump already discussed plans
Additionally, a second supplier based in Shenzhen (southern China) has explained that it’s nearly impossible for a Chinese company to move operations from China because all partners are in the country and, when requested, they could easily adapt to changes on the fly. The company pointed out that, in some cases, adapting production to new requests takes only 10 days in China, while retooling in the US could take more than a month.
Apple hasn’t yet made a decision on this, but Donald Trump himself said he discussed it with CEO Tim Cook. The two reportedly talked about incentives that could be offered to Apple should production be moved to the United States.
Donald Trump promised during the presidential race that US companies would be “forced” to manufacture products locally, threatening with a major increase in the China import tariff.