By Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen
The year is 2030. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook takes the stage, waves his new Apple Magic Wand, shouts “Apple-cadabra!” and yanks off a black cloth.
It’s the made-in-America iPhone! Built with lots of money, people, time…and pixie dust.
In the short term, President Trump’s tariffs could mean more-expensive iPhones. The longer-term goal is to reshore high-tech manufacturing to the U.S., including Apple’s cash cow.
“The army of millions and millions of human beings, screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend. “It’s going to be automated,” he added.
Except iPhones contain a patchwork of sophisticated parts, sourced from many countries and put together primarily in China, where electronics manufacturing has been perfected over a generation. America doesn’t have facilities that resemble Chinese ones, nor does it have skilled manpower to assemble iPhones at that scale.
So we assembled a panel of manufacturing and technology experts to find out how hard it would be for Apple AAPL 15.33%increase; green up pointing triangle to bring iPhone production to the U.S. The short answer? It’s easier to teach a bald eagle to use a screwdriver.
They unanimously agreed. Building the full stack of iPhone components and assembling it in the U.S.? Impossible. But shifting some manufacturing here? Not totally insane.
Apple declined to comment on the possibility of making an iPhone in the U.S. So come dream with us. Here’s what it would take to build an iPhone—or at least some of it—in the land of the free.
Cross-border cooperation
There are parts from over 40 different countries inside an iPhone with the most complex and specialized components coming from about half a dozen, says Gary Gereffi, an emeritus professor at Duke University who has spent decades studying global manufacturing.
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