This Is How Much It Would Cost To Buy An IPhone That Was Made In The U.S.
Paying three times as much for a phone, to own the libs...
goffkein.pro | Shutterstock No matter how much turmoil they create, the Trump Administration continues to insist that the worldwide tariffs implemented, then reneged on, then re-implemented, will actually benefit the American economy in the long run by returning manufacturing to our shores.
Among the President's holy grails for this endeavor is the ubiquitous iPhone. But is an American-made iPhone even plausible? Sure. But it'll cost you.
Experts have broken down how much it would cost to buy an iPhone made in the United States.
In a daily press briefing earlier this month, President Donald Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended his tariff plans. She insisted that they are part of Trump's gambit to bring back American manufacturing by moving production of the iPhone from China, where most of it occurs, to American factories.
"He believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it,” Leavitt said in the briefing, despite most experts saying none of that is true, especially where the "resources" are concerned. Namely, because America has very few factories left, and those that do exist would need extensive upgrades or even rebuilding.
That's aside from the fact that manufacturing things in the U.S. costs a fortune, which is why Steve Jobs infamously told former President Barack Obama in 2011, "the jobs are never coming back." The entire infrastructure of manufacturing shifted almost entirely to Asia and Latin America decades ago, after all.
Now, not only does the entire world economy depend on all that cheap labor and low regulation, but it would take years and trillions of dollars to even build the factories in the first place. So the answer to the question of whether an American-made iPhone is possible is "of course" — if, and only if, you, I, and everyone we know are willing to pay three times as much for one.
A U.S.-made iPhone would cost at least 25% more, and maybe as much as $3,500.
The most up-to-date iPhone currently retails for $1,199, which is already a chunk of change. But experts in the finance industry say that American labor costs alone would add at least 25% to the price, jacking it up to $1,500.
But that's just labor. That estimate doesn't even take into account the cost of the materials needed to build an iPhone, much of which can only be sourced from countries overseas that are now subject to Trump's tariffs. The U.S. does not have an abundance of rare-earth mineral mines, after all. That's why it's not one of our main industries.
Then there's the issue of the actual physical facilities needed to manufacture the iPhone. Apple would need to build most of that infrastructure, which Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC would cost Apple around $30 billion over the course of three years to move just 10% of its production here.
Much like with the tariffs, Apple isn't going to simply absorb those costs. They will pass them on to you and me. Which means, according to Ives, an iPhone priced more along the lines of $3,500, almost three times as much as it is now.
We already have a case study about Trump's U.S.-made iPhone dreams with Foxconn in Wisconsin.
It's actually not at all surprising that virtually nobody outside the White House believes Trump's iPhone promises, because we already went down this road in 2017. One of the supposed legislative achievements of his first term was helping lure Foxconn, a major Chinese manufacturer of screens for products that include iPhones, to the state of Wisconsin.
Foxconn's $10 billion factory and sprawling campus had to be built from scratch, on land acquired by seizing citizens' homes and property through eminent domain. The project promised to create 13,000 jobs in the state, and was handed more than $3 billion in tax subsidies by its then-governor to do it.
But in the end, those jobs never materialized. Citing U.S. labor costs, Foxconn reduced the scope and now has a little over 1,000 employees at its enormous Wisconsin facility, making electronics products like servers and solar components that have nothing to do with the iPhone. The rest work in China, Taiwan, and other countries where Foxconn operates.
That was 2017. Take a moment to imagine how the Foxconn debacle would have gone down now, when there are also extraordinary tariffs on raw materials, and you start to get a sense of how ludicrous the President's claims about the iPhone being built in the U.S. really are.
Or, you could just listen to Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose silence in response to Trump and his administration's claims about the future of an American-made iPhone has been nothing short of deafening. He has met with Trump privately to lock down an Apple exemption from the Chinese tariffs, though. "The Art of the Deal," indeed.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
