Apple has proudly announced it will make its next-generation Mac Pro at its plant in Texas after it received federal tariff exclusions on parts imported from China into America.
“As part of its commitment to US economic growth, Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas,” the Silicon Valley giant
boasted on Monday morning.
Some took the news as evidence that President Trump’s trade war with China, in which he has repeatedly expanded and increased tariffs on products from the country, was starting to pay dividends and he had successfully pressured one of America’s largest companies to bring more production into the country.
Except.
Apple has assembled the Mac Pro at its factory in Austin since 2013. And President Trump specifically said he would not allow the very exemptions that Apple said it has now received. There is, of course, a tweet.
“Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!” the president
announced in July.
What has changed since then? Very little. Except Apple appears to have navigated around the president by playing up to his confusion. For one thing, President Trump has repeatedly asserted that Apple was building its computers in Wisconsin, which it isn’t.
A few weeks after his “no Apple waiver” tweet, the president told reporters at the White House that he had heard Apple was planning to build the next Mac Pro in China – there's no evidence of that beyond
rumors in the Wall Street Journal – and that he had now heard that it was going to build a new plant in Texas to make them in America, thanks in large part to his tariffs. Apple isn’t; it already had the Austin factory.
).
