Apple Can’t Leave China, With or Without Tariffs
A new book chronicles the tech giant’s Faustian bargain with America’s geopolitical nemesis.
China is Apple's new existential threat.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
During President Donald Trump’s first term, he famously toured a Texas factory and claimed credit for bringing Apple Inc. production back to America. Except the plant had been running long before he took office. And it was an “unmitigated fiasco.” Workers in China had to be flown in to help fix the mounting manufacturing issues encountered in the US heartland.
This telling anecdote from Apple in China, a gripping read by former Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, shows how the tech giant became beholden to America’s biggest geopolitical adversary. Up until this point, the book recounts how Apple flew engineers from California to China to train and collaborate with local workers to manufacture its most iconic products.