Why won't Apple make iPhones in America?

The future of the iPhone is up in the air. The White House announced Friday that electronics would be given an exception from President Donald Trump's massive new 145% tariffs on Chinese-made products. On Sunday, Trump seemed to renounce that waiver. That puts iPhone-maker Apple in limbo.

The tariffs are "poised to take a toll on tech companies like Apple," said CNBC. The tech giant is a U.S.-based company, but it "makes iPhones and most of its other products in China." Trump believes that "America cannot rely on China to manufacture critical technologies," said White House spokesman Kush Desai. Apple and other companies should be "hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible."

"What — besides magic — would it take to make iPhones here?" said The Wall Street Journal. The answer: a lot of money and time. iPhones are made from a "patchwork of sophisticated parts." Those parts originate in many countries and then are assembled in China. Some of the manufacturing could eventually be moved to America, experts say, but the devices would become prohibitively expensive: One estimate puts the cost of a homegrown iPhone at $3,500. The United States, said Johns Hopkins University business professor Tinglong Dai, has "lost the art of manufacturing at scale."

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What did the commentators say?

An "all-American iPhone is impossible," Ed Hardy said at Cult of Mac. The United States does not have enough "production capacity, or sufficient numbers of workers" willing to take low-paying factory jobs. Nor does it have enough "customers thrilled about paying much higher costs" for U.S.-made products. Even if those obstacles are overcome, the transition will take time. An all-American iPhone "can't possibly roll off the production line before 2027."

There would be "few bigger victories" for Trump than moving iPhone production to America, Mark Gurman said at Bloomberg. Bringing factory jobs back to the U.S. would "validate his tariff plan." Apple is decreasing its reliance on China but is doing so by building the "world's second-largest iPhone plant" in India. The challenge is enormous: Apple's biggest manufacturing complexes in China are "almost towns themselves," with housing, education and medical facilities serving thousands of workers. "What city in America is going to put everything down and build only iPhones?" said Matthew Moore, a former Apple engineer.

What next?

It is still not clear what the immediate future holds for Apple and other tech companies. Trump appeared to renounce the waiver on Sunday, saying on his Truth Social account there was "no tariff 'exception'" granted for electronic products. American companies "need to make products in the United States," he said.

Apple was moving to airlift 600 tons of iPhones from India to "beat" the new tariffs, said Reuters. The company made extraordinary efforts to streamline the India-to-U.S. pipeline, working with authorities to reduce the time to clear customs at the Chennai airport from 30 hours down to six. Apple now sells "more than 220 million iPhones" a year around the world: A fifth of those come from India.