“If you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge,” Trump said in the meeting with the press and Cook, where he also announced the chips tariff.
Apple did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“The president has now gotten a long series of these giant commitments to manufacturing in the U.S. from a lot of other countries and a lot of companies,” Badaracco told Fortune. “So this is the way of making the Apple commitment stand out a little more.”
“Nobody would describe it as ethically noble, but it was just a small gesture underscoring the Apple commitment,” he added.
“If you’re running a company dealing with the Trump administration, you’ve got sort of a collapse of the old checks and balances: Congress has the courts moving slowly, and in the interim, you’ve got a president who’s acting, by many accounts, arbitrarily,” Badaracco said. “So you’ve got to do what you can in circumstances like that.”
