Obama’s State of the Union speech in February, 2013 was about the need for American jobs. During the speech he commended Intel and Apple for focusing on bringing their factory production into the United States.

“Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three,” Obama said in his speech. “Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.”

Although Tim Cook announced that Apple would spend $100 million to bring Mac production to the United States in December, the results weren’t perfect. Look at these iMacs for example:

Late-December 27" iMac which wasn't built in the USA.

Late-December 2012 27″ iMac which wasn’t built in the US.

Apple Manufacturing Products in USA

Late-December 2012 21.5″ iMac built in the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regardless, Apple is still bent on producing Mac computers in the US. They don’t want to just put together the final product in the US, but they want to manufacture entire components in Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky. The only question left to answer now is “Why?”

Previous Attempts at Manufacturing In the US

This isn’t the first time Apple is trying to bring it’s manufacturing plants to the United States. In 1984 they spent $20 million on a Mac manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The plant was designed so that automation was the driving force of the production instead of manual labor (which is expensive in the US). However the overheads of domestic manufacturing were too high, and the plant was shut down in 1992.

In the 1990’s Steve Jobs tried his hand at domestic manufacturing once again. This time he spent $10 million on a NeXT manufacturing plant (which was built once again in Fremont). The NeXT factory and company both failed within a couple of years.

So if Apple knows that domestic manufacturing is difficult and expensive, then why are they so interested in investing $100 million in moving their operations to the United States? Could it be because of the criticism they have been getting over their Chinese factories? Apple certainly doesn’t want people associating their products with factories that mimic sweatshop conditions, strikes, and worker suicides.

A solution that would ease consumers’ minds is putting a “Made in USA” label on products. It’s fairly easy to earn this label. Apple would simply have to ship all the manufactured components from China, and then put them together in the USA. However that doesn’t fully solve the problem. Shipping all of these products overseas and then distributing them to US factories is really expensive.

That’s why it would make more sense to bring the production of components into the USA. Apple is willing to risk $100 million to try fully manufacturing Mac products in the USA.

Does Apple Have Other Motives?

Over the last decade the United States lost 28% of technology manufacturing jobs. It’s lead in science and technology is also starting to slip. Whether the technology loss is being experienced in education, research, or manufacturing, it’s really effecting the American nation.

When technology, education, research, and manufacturing start to slow down,  then so does the technology interest of consumers. Consider Hitler’s Volkswagen campaign during World War II. He ordered Ferdinand Porsche to develop the Volkswagen (which literally means “people’s car” in German). Hitler even used the Volkswagen as a selling point for his war efforts: he claimed that all citizens of the Reich would be given this car and that they could all afford its luxuries.

So here you have a German car being manufactured by German people. It’s only logical that the vehicle will excel and so will its popularity. Adults that work in the manufacturing plants are more likely to buy a Volkswagen, parents are more likely to influence their children to buy one, and so forth.

Building Apple products in the United States would have the same effect as building the Volkswagen did in WWII. On one side the US Air Force is investing in iPads and the Pentagon is approving iOS for government use, and on the other side Americans are building Apple products. This is the perfect plan for Apple so that it doesn’t lose it’s roots.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer in their American garage. They marketed it in America, as an American product. Even iTunes is most successful in America.

So today, when American products are being manufactured via China’s cheap labor, and CNN writes articles like this: Apple may finally realize it’s time to bring its operations back home. Instead of putting American money in China’s economy, why not put it into the American economy? After all, Apple can’t be successful if its country isn’t.

Article written by Octavian Ristea.