"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.
President Trump's long-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" recently. "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 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.
Mixed signals from the Trump administration over the weekend regarding tariffs on smartphones, laptops and other electronics have also fueled fresh uncertainty over U.S. trade policy.
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.
Global effort
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.
Right now, many of those parts are made in -- or near -- China, which benefits from its proximity to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
The only realistic path to U.S. iPhone assembly is to reconstruct its supply chain by shifting some of its key component manufacturing to the broader North American region, says Gereffi, with some parts made in Mexico and Canada -- maybe even Western Europe. If a U.S. assembly operation were to start in the next three to five years, however, it would depend on parts from Asia, too.
When Apple began building the Mac Pro desktop in the U.S., one of the first roadblocks was sourcing enough parts -- including screws -- close to home.
Even if funding were no object -- and we'll get to that -- Gereffi estimates it would take three to five years to build out the scale and quality required for us to join hands in a big American manufacturing kumbaya.
Skilled makers
Speaking of hands, iPhone assembly in the U.S. would require a dramatically increased number of them -- both human and robotic.
It wouldn't be impossible to buy the manufacturing equipment required, but getting enough people who are able to run it might be, says Tinglong Dai, a business professor at Johns Hopkins University, who studies global supply chains.
"We have a severe labor shortage," he says, "and we've lost the art of manufacturing at scale."
Foxconn, which assembles iPhones, has said it employs 300,000 workers in Zhengzhou, China, aka "iPhone City."
Apple plans to source more iPhones assembled in India, according to a Wall Street Journal report. India, too, has a large manufacturing workforce.
The U.S. doesn't. Hiring is one of the biggest problems facing existing American factories.
Then there's the skills gap.
In a 2017 interview with Fortune, Cook said the incentive to build in China wasn't cheap labor. "The products we do require really advanced tooling," he said, nodding to the sophisticated iPhone-making equipment.
"In the U.S., 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."
Robots can help with packaging and testing, but tasks such as routing cables, adding glue and yes, screwing in little screws, still require humans, Dai says.
Mountains of money
All of this is going to take moolah. Lots and lots of it. President Trump has pointed out Apple's willingness to spend $500 billion on U.S. manufacturing. But the company's commitment is largely for a factory in Houston intended to make AI servers, not iPhones.
Apple would have to spend more to build out the manufacturing ecosystem for an All-American iPhone. And even if it did, would the company be able to maintain iPhone quality while selling them at today's prices?
"No," says, well, everyone.
A $1,000 iPhone made completely in the U.S. would be a low-quality product, at least at first, Dai says.
"The U.S. has the capacity to manufacture smartphone parts in some areas, but it is not the best across these areas." America would need to catch up on decades of expertise that Japan has with cameras, and South Korea has with displays, for instance.
There's momentum for American semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC, the world's largest chip maker and Apple's partner, promised to build several plants in Arizona. But for now the company's most advanced chips, including Apple's, can only be made in Taiwan.
In 2017, during Trump's first administration, Foxconn announced plans to build TV displays in Wisconsin at a 13,000-worker facility. It has drastically reduced its commitment -- creating only about 1,000 jobs.
Manufacturing costs turned out to be "four to five times more expensive" than in China, says Jeff Fieldhack, a research director at Counterpoint Research.
Before Trump's tariffs, Fieldhack estimates, Apple could make a U.S. operation in five years, assuming money was no object.
But here's the kicker: With new fees and tariffs threatening to jack up the cost of factory building materials -- lumber, steel and everything in between -- "It's way down the road now," he says.
Don't worry, Tim Cook's working on that Apple Magic Wand.
1. U.S.-Made iPhone Is Apple Pie in the Sky --- With uncertainty about tariffs and a push to bring back high-tech manufacturing, what would it take to make products here? Stern, Joanna; Nguyen, Nicole. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 14 Apr 2025: A12.
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