Amid trade dust-up, Apple plans to move Mac Pro manufacturing to China – report

Apple’s new Mac Pro computer, the company’s last major device to be produced in the US, will now apparently be manufactured in China. The move comes as Washington and Beijing prepare to resolve an ongoing trade dispute.

The hi-tech $6,000 desktop will be assembled through Quanta Computer Inc., a Taiwan-based electronics contractor, in a manufacturing plant near Shanghai, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.

The tech giant, which relies on Chinese factories to produce many of its products, has come under pressure from the Trump administration to make more products in the US. While the Mac Pro was designed and engineered domestically, and previous models were built in the US, the sources said that Apple will achieve lower shipping costs with the move abroad.

In 2017, and again last year, the president claimed that Apple CEO Tim Cook personally agreed to build “big plants, beautiful plants” in the US, but the company declined to comment on the assertion, and has announced no such plans.

An Apple spokesperson defended the move, telling the Wall Street Journal that the company assembles products in 30 US states, and last year spent $60 billion with over 9,000 US suppliers, supporting jobs for 2 million Americans.

“Final assembly is only one part of the manufacturing process,” the spokesman said.

President Trump will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan this weekend to sort outstanding issues, including tensions over trade and tariffs, as well as controversy over Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which has been accused of stealing trade secrets from American tech firms, something it staunchly denies. Prior to the meeting, the two leaders agreed to a “truce” in the trade dispute, but precisely what that will entail is still unclear.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!