Why does Apple still manufacture in China? Old video of Tim Cook explains

"It's not cheap labour," Apple CEO Cook said in a 2017 interview to Fortune Magazine, adding that China's strength lies in its pool of skilled tooling engineers and manufacturing precision

While imposing tariffs on nations across the world Donald Trump said that these duties seek to re-shore manufacturing back to the United States. However, an old video of technology giant Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has resurfaced online explaining why they prefer manufacturing in China.

 

“It’s not cheap labour,” Cook said in a 2017 interview to Fortune Magazine.

 

Cook’s video has resurfaced amid raging tariff tensions between the US and China where both are trying to out-tariff each other.

 

 

‘It’s the skill’ 

While giving his opinion, Cook said, “The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labour costs. I’m not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being a low labour cost country years ago.”

 

He further explained that they manufacture in China because of the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.

 

“The products we require need advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with materials that we do are state-of-the-art. Tooling skill in China is very deep,” Cook added.

 

Further pointing out the lack of tooling engineers in the US, Cook claimed, “In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields…. Hence, the vocational expertise in China is very deep.”

Trump wants Apple to begin building in the US

Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt cleared that Trump wants Apple to begin building its devices in the US. “If Apple didn’t think the US could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” she said while referring to Apple’s announcement of investing $500 billion in the US over the next four years.

 

Meanwhile what’s noteworthy is that Apple is also focusing on turning India into its new source of US-bound iPhones. Apple’s partners are building the world’s second-largest iPhone plant in that country, decreasing the company’s reliance on China, reported Bloomberg. The company assembled $22 billion worth of iPhones in India from April 2024 to March 2025, increasing its production by nearly 60 per cent over the previous year, the report added.