Apple is working to bring more manufacturing to the United States, including making chips and assembling the Mac mini, but it’s a slow-moving project.
Pressure is mounting to outsource Apple manufacturing and assembly to the state. However, despite the $600 billion in investment, what can be done in the US pales in comparison to the global supply chain.
Tea The Wall Street Journal gained special access to various facilities in the United States to investigate how Apple is repatriating its supply chain. Executives such as COO Sabih Khan took part in tours of the TSMC plant in Arizona, the Foxconn Houston factory and others.
Much land that was previously shared has been reclaimed, for example TSMC’s 1,100-acre factory in Arizona will produce four- and five-nanometer process chips. It will take ten years to build and operate the six factories necessary to match Taiwan’s current output of 100,000 wafers per month.
The $165 billion device was out of date the moment it came online. By 2030, it will be able to produce the two-nanometer chips made in Taiwan today, but Taiwan will have made further leaps forward in that time.
A reporter visited a Foxconn facility in Houston that makes AI servers – about 10 per hour. These are the ones that Apple uses to process Private Cloud Compute.
The same equipment is also assembled to build the Mac mini. While production will initially be in limited numbers, the plan is to eventually manufacture the entire supply in the US.
There is no way the Mac mini is selling for iPhone numbers. The report suggests that Apple sells about 1 million Mac minis worldwide, far fewer than the number of iPhones.
Apple is trying to bring more of its business back to the United States after spending several decades moving to China. Moving any significant percentage to the United States is impractical, if not impossible, but supply chain diversity is important.
These efforts and investments have proven to be enough to keep the current US administration on its toes. Tariff exemptions and less scrutiny have gone a long way so far, but Apple isn’t completely immune to the impact on the industry.