Apple Says New Mac Pro Will Be Manufactured in Texas After Receiving Tariff Exemptions

[Analog Kid]

I don’t think this bodes well for the success of the new Mac Pro. I don’t see anything in the article that says this is the best choice for the Mac or its customers, only that it satisfies a political objective. The problems with making the 2013 model in the US are well documented, now more than twice as much of this machine is being made in the US and we’re not getting quotes about lower costs or improved reliability, but instead about a handful of jobs that are most likely just being taken from another manufacturer.

I have a bad feeling that Apple needed to sacrifice a product line on the political altar as they offer thanks to the Administration for not smiting them and pray for the fertility of their crop of iPhones-- and the MP is what they chose. The White House will get a tweet out of this, Apple might get the President’s ear for a meeting or two on additional tariff exemptions, and we get a compromised workstation.

 

[hudson1]

Why couldn't the US do it? Or you're suggesting that Apple and many other "woke" corporations take advantage of what the West would call borderline slave labor? And so could not compete?

You can build a Mac Pro in Texas because you don't have to build that many of them. Trying to hire enough workers to build a massive amount of iPhones is a whole different question. Probably can't do it anywhere in the US or Canada.

 

[R.Youden]

So Apple is building the new Mac Pro in the same facility that made the old Mac Pro. How is this a news story? How is the 'bringing jobs back to America' how is this anything special done by the current administration?

The only people to make money out of this are the lobbyists who have been pushing for the removal of tariffs. Reading between the lines if the tariffs hadn't been removed then these machines would have been made abroad. Surely this shows that the tariffs don't work??

 

[deconstruct60]

Not sure why this is important to manufucture in the US? A tiny product like this isn't really going to help raise employment levels in the US.

It does. The lazy middle management tech industry excuse typically goes something like this. Most (all) of the product of X is in Location Y so we have to put our X production there to because that is where all the action is. After location Y starves out the work from other places then you get the excuse you hear from folks like Apple " there are hardly any tool-and-die companies in the USA they are tons on China" ... blah blah blah " that's why we have to go to China" . After you and your cohorts turned the spigot off there is no water. Yeah right.

If you starve out all the work from place X there won't be many component suppliers left. You end up with more so self fulfilling "prophecies" than actual free market dynamics. But then you end up with issues like the Thai floods that disrupted HDD markets for over a year because most of the actuators were in pragmatically one single location (in a flood plain).

And I doubt Apple will sell more than 60K of these systems a year. Over 45 weeks a year that is ~1,333 per week. Even at 100,000 its 2K/wk. No it isn't a ton of jobs. But don't have to throw folks under the bus either on huge fat margin products either. ( a $6K PC with a 256GB entry storage drive).


The cost of paying the manufacturing workers is negligible on a Mac Pro system price. Making it in China is just herd mentality coupled to exceedingly deep Scrooge McDuck penny pinching. Apple manufacturing base is relatively brittle for the size of the company. A broad base would actually be a substantive improvement risk wise.

 

[TrenttonY]

You can build a Mac Pro in Texas because you don't have to build that many of them. Trying to hire enough workers to build a massive amount of iPhones is a whole different question. Probably can't do it anywhere in the US or Canada.

300 million people. How many unemployed college students again?
And why can't they use DIVERSTY in their supply chain? Some made in China, some India and some US. Of course they can but they only care about money.

 

[coolbreeze]

Great step to winning back our own economic wealth from China.

If you complain about this, do your thing, but realize how your hate for one man is why. This is good news for the USA, the end.

 

[centauratlas]

Lol they've manufactured the Mac Pro in Texas since before Trump, bud. He's just trying to make this look like it was because of him by threatening to subject Apple to those ridiculous tariffs. Same thing with all the "jobs" he's adding. It's remnants from Obama's administration and, the few he has managed to add, are piss poor.

Apple was always going to manufacture the Mac Pro in Texas because they already were and it proved to be working. Luckily for Tim it isn't very hard to negotiate with a narcissistic man child and make him think it was really his idea.

Except, this one wasn't going to be:
"
Apple Moves Mac Pro Production to China
The $6,000 desktop computer had been the company’s only major device assembled in the U.S.
WSJ June 28, 2019 9:32 am ET"


(https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-...na-11561728769?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1 and https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/28/apple-2019-mac-pro-not-made-in-the-usa/
)

 

[1applerules1]

Not sure why this is important to manufucture in the US? A tiny product like this isn't really going to help raise employment levels in the US.

new jobs for Americans is significant for the individuals working, and it does infact reflect on the unemployment rate.

 

[TrenttonY]

So Apple is building the new Mac Pro in the same facility that made the old Mac Pro. How is this a news story? How is the 'bringing jobs back to America' how is this anything special done by the current administration?

The only people to make money out of this are the lobbyists who have been pushing for the removal of tariffs. Reading between the lines if the tariffs hadn't been removed then these machines would have been made abroad. Surely this shows that the tariffs don't work??

So business as usual then? What do you suggest be done? Get rid of minimum wage? Get rid of environmental regulations? Break-up Unions?

If your against tariffs and the things listed above, it truly will be business as usual, as the West won't be able to compete with second and third world nations. Sorry to say but industrial countries cannot survive off of coffee shops and Etsy stores.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

good move Apple! Just wish you would have started production in June...

 

[1applerules1]

I'm so glad I voted for Trump. He's bringing jobs back from the US! the job market is skyrocketing!

 

[tkukoc]

So business as usual for this particular product after being threatened not to move it and given yet another tax cut or handshake for something else. Good for whoever falls for it I guess, this is another nonstory.

 

[fokmik]

Is it still going to cost more than a new car?

We are talking about Dacia or Rolls Royce?
Very childish question...since people that buy this thing, make real money per second, so for them its an investment

 

[jlocker]

There isn't a long-term plan to move manufacturing to the US. The US is much better at designing these products and writing the software that runs on them, which is far more valuable. It is a mystery why we are so obsessed with wanting low-skilled, low-paid manufacturing jobs back with horrible working conditions.

You have to ask yourself, do you want people having a job, even if it is low wage? Or do you want people living off welfare and the government. I say a lower paying job, at least they are contributing to society and the US economy. I have been working since i was 16 in jobs that only paid $4.00 a hour to jobs that paid me $45 dollars a hour. So you live within your means and if you want better you work to make yourself better and get more pay.

I will be working for the next 10 years at least, in a job that pays me half what i made in the 90's. But i work and don't cry about low wages.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

I'm curious about the tie in of tariff exemptions to US based manufacturing. You'd expect the opposite, i.e. Apple just received tariff exemptions so that would make it more affordable to manufacture in China rather than needing to bring the manufacturing to the US. Or is the exemption only on the components if brought in AS components (not a reduction in the DCOG for the assembled computer)? Or was there a quid pro quo that Apple would bring the manufacturing to the US in exchange for the tariff exemptions? Seems like there's more to know about this situation.

 

[psingh01]

They got a tariff exemption which means they are still importing a bunch of components. Maybe just assembling it in Texas. Better than nothing I guess.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Is it still going to cost more than a new car?

well it IS cheaper to just steal intellectual property and then hack it onto an assembly of commodity parts, but when you follow the law things can be expensive.

 

[roland.g]

Wasn’t the last Mac Pro also manufactured/assembled in Texas? This is different how.

 

[BWhaler]

Thank you President Trump

Spare me. The last Mac Pro was made in the USA too, almost a decade before Trump slithered into office.

Thank Tim Cook.

 

[fokmik]

Wasn’t the last Mac Pro also manufactured/assembled in Texas? This is different how.

Different president

 

[Krevnik]

I believe studies have shown that production costs would not rise significantly. The real issue is building a production infrastructure to support the manufacture of an average of 10 million units a month (and then there is the new production rush in late August where they are probably pushing out that many every couple of weeks).

Yup, having your silicon pipelines all focused in China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan doesn't help. There's good reason why India and Vietnam are places where manufacturing is ramping up when looking outside China.

The other gotcha is that ramping this sort of pipeline up in the US again would also bring a lot of automation with it. So we aren't going to see the sorts of jobs that China is seeing. The US jobs would require more specialized skills and training, which means better pay, but maybe not as many as there would be if we just imported the jobs from China. And we don't seem interested in anything like a new GI Bill type program to help folks get the skills they need for this. Maybe because we don't have a large chunk of a generation coming back from a bloody war that we feel we need to repay.

I don’t think this bodes well for the success of the new Mac Pro. I don’t see anything in the article that says this is the best choice for the Mac or its customers, only that it satisfies a political objective. The problems with making the 2013 model in the US are well documented, now more than twice as much of this machine is being made in the US and we’re not getting quotes about lower costs or improved reliability, but instead about a handful of jobs that are most likely just being taken from another manufacturer.

Logistics are definitely a big issue. But the irony here is that manufacturing in this case is "final assembly".

One reason Apple is aggressively trying to shrink products and packaging is because the more of them that fit on a palette, the cheaper it is to get products to a worldwide audience. By doing final assembly in the US, they can fit more "Mac Pros" on a palette from China to the US as components. So it's not completely political theater, but it is definitely part of it.

The case manufacturing can be automated here, and aluminum is something you can source fairly easily in the US. So long as they can source the right screws, too.

 

[Analog Kid]

I'm so glad I voted for Trump. He's bringing jobs back from the US! the job market is skyrocketing!

Pop quiz: at what point in this chart was Trump elected?

 

[jkcerda]

trump FTW.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Thank you President Trump

no.

 

[roland.g]

Different president

44. 45. It’s just a revision. Like software. Which version are we running. They all have bugs. If you think it’s any different from that..,