Donald Trump and Tim Cook Meet at an Apple Factory

Donald Trump’s effort to tout U.S. economic growth will clash with his trade war on Wednesday when he visits an Apple Inc. factory in Texas, where Tim Cook will probably plead in-person to keep Macs and iPhones free from tariffs.

Trump’s visit to the Austin factory, where Apple contractor Flex Ltd. assembles some of the company’s laptops, is intended to highlight the growth in U.S. manufacturing jobs since his inauguration. Trump has made U.S. economic growth the centerpiece of his campaign for re-election in 2020.

But the stop will also highlight the impact of Trump’s trade war with Beijing. The administration is currently considering whether to exempt Apple goods from a 15% tariff that took effect Sept. 1, covering about $110 billion in Chinese imports including the Apple Watch, AirPods and parts for the iPhone.

Cook, Apple’s CEO, has cultivated a personal relationship with both Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, who is a White House senior adviser. He’s dined twice with Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort, attended a state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron and even traveled with Ivanka Trump to visit schools in Idaho. But that rapport will be tested if Trump can’t reach what he calls a “phase-one” trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping that would roll back U.S. tariffs.

A round of tariffs set to take effect in December would be even more painful for Apple, including a 15% levy on the iPhone itself.

Apple Tariffs

Trump and Cook plan to tour the Austin facility together — a factory that White House spokesman Judd Deere said was “made possible through the president’s pro-growth and pro-business economic policies.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, two key figures on trade, will accompany Trump, as will senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

“We’re building the Mac Pro — Apple’s most powerful computer ever — right here in Austin because we believe in the power of American innovation,” Cook said in a statement distributed by the White House.

The White House hasn’t said whether Trump plans to discuss Apple’s request for tariff waivers with Cook, and Apple declined to comment beyond previous statements.

In its appeal for a waiver, Apple claims it cannot identify a manufacturing location outside China able to meet U.S. demand for the products or components that would be subject to tariffs.

Apple previously received tariff waivers on 10 of 15 requested items in September. Soon afterward, the company announced it would assemble its new Mac Pro in Austin, Texas, rather than China. Apple said at the time that the decision was “made possible” by the exclusions, which included components for the Mac Pro.

Cook’s Leverage

The sequence of events showed that Cook has some leverage on Trump. The president said in August that Cook personally appealed to him by arguing that tariffs would help Apple’s foreign competition.

“I have a lot of respect for Tim Cook. And Tim was talking to me about tariffs. And, you know, one of the things — and he made a good case — is that Samsung is their number-one competitor, and Samsung is not paying tariffs because they’re based in South Korea,” Trump told reporters in August.

Trump laid out his economic argument for re-election last week in a speech at the Economic Club of New York, highlighting his tax cuts and deregulation as key catalysts for economic growth. The U.S. added about 443,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2017, the month Trump took office, though factories have shed about 41,000 positions in the last two months.

Apple had planned to move Mac Pro assembly to China after a number of problems plagued the Austin facility, including trouble retaining skilled labor. The factory produced a previous version of the computer starting in 2013.

While Cook has said his company supports 2.4 million jobs in the U.S., only a small fraction are for final assembly. Earlier this decade, the company assembled a small amount of iMacs at a facility in Elk Grove, California but it currently does not assemble any product in the U.S. outside of Texas. Apple has offices in San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Austin, Denver, Seattle, Florida, and Boston.

The company announced in Dec. 2018 plans to invest $1 billion in its existing Austin campus so that it could employ as many as 15,000 workers, according to the White House.