US President Donald Trump (R) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (2nd L), with Senior Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump (L) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, tour the Flextronics computer manufacturing facility where Apple’s Mac Pros are assembled in Austin, Texas, on November 20, 2019.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
Faced with intensifying pressure from President Donald Trump to bring more jobs to the U.S., Apple is opening a manufacturing program in downtown Detroit.
The Apple Manufacturing Academy, which is being administered by Michigan State University, will offer workshops on manufacturing and artificial intelligence to small and medium-sized businesses when it opens in August, Apple said on Tuesday. The company said that it would “train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers” and that Apple engineers would participate in the workshops.
Apple is one of the most admired hardware companies in the world, manufacturing tens of millions of complicated devices each year across a global supply chain.
“With this new programming, we’re thrilled to help even more businesses implement smart manufacturing so they can unlock amazing opportunities for their companies and our country,” Sabih Khan, Apple’s newly named chief operating officer, said in the statement.
The announcement is part of a public effort by Apple to highlight its U.S. operations and investments to appease Trump, who has called on the company to move iPhone production to the U.S. while he implements tariffs that will likely raise Apple’s costs.
Apple first promised to open the Apple Manufacturing Academy in February, when it announced plans to spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, investing in products, programs and companies. Apple also said it would assemble AI servers in Houston and buy chips from a TSMC factory based in Arizona.
While Trump hailed Apple’s plans in February, his administration has continued to try and strong-arm the company into assembling iPhones in the U.S., which experts say would be cost prohibitive and take a very long time. In May, Trump said he had a “little problem” with CEO Tim Cook, who had said that Apple expanded production to India to avoid Chinese tariffs.
“I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India,” Trump said.
Apple runs a similar program focusing on software development, instead of manufacturing. Apple has 18 developer academies around the world, according to its website, notably in countries where the iPhone maker wants to forge a working relationship with governments, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. The only developer academy in the U.S. is also based in Detroit, in partnership with Michigan State, which said this spring that it has about 200 students annually.
Apple said that it would provide consulting services to small businesses through the program, and that the manufacturing academy would also offer some courses virtually later this year.
