Tim Cook explains why Apple makes iPhones in China. It's not due to low labour costs. Watch

Apple CEO Tim Cook also highlighted the difference between manufacturing in the US and China.

While setting off the tariff war, US President Donald Trump had said that he wanted companies, including Apple, to manufacture their products in the country. But critics, experts, and industry leaders have pointed out how large-scale manufacturing of products is not feasible in the US. Amid this, a 2024 video of Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing rounds on social media on why the tech giant chooses to make their products in China.

In the 55-second clip, Cook clarified China wasn't their country of preference because of their low labour costs. "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 the low labor cost country years ago,” he said.

The Apple CEO said that China is the manufacturing hub of several top tech companies because of the prevalent "quantity of skill" in one location and the type of skill. '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," he said, adding that the "tooling skill" in China is "very deep".

Highlighting the difference in manufacturing in the US and China, Cook said, “In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not we could fill the room.” In China, however, “you could fill multiple football fields.... Hence, the vocational expertise in China is very deep".

Tim Cook breaks down why Apple builds in China and why the U.S. isnt ready to replace it yet.pic.twitter.com/OiEpyIEZlN
Nigel D'Souza (@Nigel__DSouza) April 11, 2025

Earlier this week, Trump made it clear that he wants Apple to begin building the device in the US. “If Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. She was referring to the company's promise to invest $500 billion domestically over the next four years.

But according to a Bloomberg report, Apple is unlikely to move iPhone production to the US in the foreseeable future for a variety of reasons, including the shortage of facilities and labor needed to produce the devices. The country also lacks the rich ecosystem of suppliers, manufacturing and engineering know-how that — for now — can only be found in Asia.

Meanwhile, Apple is also more focused on turning India into its new source of US-bound iPhones. The tech giant's partners are building the world’s second-largest iPhone plant in the country to decrease its reliance on China. In the last 12 months ending in March, the company assembled $22 billion worth of iPhones in India, increasing production by nearly 60 percent over the previous year in a sign of continued diversification away from China.