Apple will manufacture its new Mac Pro computer in China, moving production of what had been its only major device assembled in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company will use Quanta Computer to make the US$6 000 desktop computer and is ramping up production at a factory near Shanghai, the Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The news comes as China and the US are embroiled in a trade war, with the Trump administration having imposed billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese-made goods. Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to discuss the tariffs at a highly anticipated meeting during the Group of 20 summit in Japan on Saturday. Trump has called out Apple specifically in the past asking it to move more of its production from China to the US.
Apple shares fell 1% on the news to $197.58 in New York. A spokesperson for Apple wasn’t immediately available for comment. An Apple spokesman told the Journal that the new Mac Pro is designed and engineered in the US and includes US-made components.
By producing the Mac Pro at Quanta’s facility, which is close to other Apple suppliers around Asia, it will allow Apple to take advantage of lower shipping costs than if it shipped components to the US, the Journal said.
With the last Mac Pro, in 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a show of manufacturing the computer in Austin, Texas, as part of the company’s $100-million Made-in-the-USA push.
For more than a year, Apple avoided major damage from the US trade war with China, thanks in part to a White House charm offensive by Cook. But the recent round of tariffs proposed by the US includes mobile phones, such as the iPhone, Apple’s most important product that is made almost entirely in China. Laptops and tablets may also be encumbered with the 25% import levy. — Reported by Molly Schuetz, (c) 2019 Bloomberg LP