- President Donald Trump said that Apple planned to build new plants in the United States in a speech at the White House touting the economy on Friday.
- Apple has not announced plans to build factories in the United States.
- Trump says Apple's investment in the United States was made possible by the tax reform passed in December.
President Donald Trump again said that Apple planned to build "new plants" in the United States in a speech touting the economy on Friday.
Apple has not announced plans to build factories in the United States, but its top manufacturing partner, Foxconn, recently cut the ribbon on a $10 billion facility in Wisconsin.
"Apple alone is bringing in $230 billion and they’re building new plants, they’re building a magnificent campus, they’re gonna be spending their money very wisely, but they’re spending it in our country, not in some other country," Trump said in a speech on the White House South Lawn.
"That was made possible by the new tax cut and reform plan," he continued.
Apple earlier this year said it could bring back the majority of its $252 billion in cash it held abroad thanks to the new tax code that Trump signed into law in December.
Part of the new tax code allowed for a one-time repatriation of cash held abroad at a lower tax rate than previously possible. Apple paid $38 billion in taxes when it repatriated its foreign holdings.
In January, Apple announced that it would spend $350 billion in the United States over the next five years, and build a new campus. The location of that campus hasn't yet been announced.
This isn't the first time Trump has said Apple plans to build manufacturing in the United States. In January 2017 he said that he spoke to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who he said committed to build "three big plants" in the United States.
Cook met with Trump at the White House in April. According to Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Counsel, the two businessmen discussed building plants in the United States, trade, and tax reform. Cook later said that he told Trump that he believed that tariffs were "not the right approach."
Apple is strongly against Trump's trade tariffs on goods from China, which could affect Apple products like the Apple Watch. "I don't think that iPhone will get a tariff on it," Cook said in June.
Apple has not commented on Trump's claim that it plans to build plants in the United States. It didn't respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Watch the entire speech below:
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