Apple Announces Billions in U.S. Investment after Trump Meeting

By Shannon Najmabadi and Gerrit De Vynck / By The Washington Post

13:02 JST, February 25, 2025

Apple said it will spend $500 billion in the United States over the next four years, much of it previously planned investment, after the tech giant’s chief executive held a meeting with President Donald Trump last week.

The investment includes building a production line for AI computer servers – which Apple uses internally to run its AI tools – in Houston and a multibillion-dollar commitment to buy computer chips built at an Arizona factory run by Taiwanese chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The bulk of the money will constitute normal spending for the company, including paying U.S.-based employees, running its offices, and funding TV shows and movies that are filmed and produced in the United States, Apple said in a Monday press release.

Apple is the latest corporation to tout huge investment numbers as Trump works to fulfill his campaign promises of boosting the economy and moving manufacturing facilities from abroad into the United States. On Trump’s first full day in office, AI company OpenAI, Japanese tech investor SoftBank and cloud company Oracle said they would spend $500 billion to build AI data centers in the country. The Washington Post later reported that the “Stargate” project had been in the works months before Trump won the election.

Trump has levied tariffs on China and threatened to impose more on other countries where U.S. tech products are built, saying repeatedly that tariffs are an effective way to force U.S. and foreign companies to move their production facilities to the United States.

Apple received an exemption from tariffs on Chinese imports during Trump’s first term. Announcing the U.S. investment could help the company gain the same exemption this time around, too, William Kerwin, an analyst with the Morningstar investment research firm, said in a Monday note to clients.

“Apple’s spending plan is a direct strategy to earn an exemption from tariffs on imports from China,” Kerwin said. “Close to 70% of iPhones are manufactured in China, meaning tariffs could have a large impact on the firm’s financials.”

Trump took credit for the Apple investment, thanking Apple and CEO Tim Cook in a social media post Monday and suggesting the company wouldn’t have made the $500 billion investment were it not for “faith in what we are doing.”

“I had Tim Cook in the office from Apple. He’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said during a speech to U.S. governors at the White House on Friday. “We’re going to have a lot of chipmakers coming in, a lot of automakers coming in.”

Apple has made no commitments to build any of its products in the United States. Its Monday announcement said only that it would move the production line for the AI servers to Houston and planned to open the facility next year. The AI servers represent a tiny fraction of the millions of pieces of hardware Apple produces every year, which are almost exclusively built in China and other Asian nations.

Apple does buy some components, such as the radio frequency tech and glue used inside some of its devices, from U.S.-based manufacturers, according to a company website.

Apple’s announcement mirrored a promise it made during Trump’s first term. In 2018, it said it would contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy over five years and hire 20,000 people in the United States. Apple made a similar commitment during the Biden administration.

During his first term, Trump also referred to promises that he said Apple had made as a way to burnish his reputation for boosting American manufacturing. In 2017, Trump said in an interview that Apple had promised to build “three big plants, beautiful plants,” without elaborating. Apple did not build the plants.