Apple announces $500B investment in U.S. over next four years

Apple said Monday that it plans to create 20,000 jobs and open a new manufacturing facility in Houston as part of a more than $500 billion investment in the United States over the next four years.

The Texas plant, which will open in 2026, will assemble servers “previously manufactured outside the U.S.” that help power Apple’s artificial intelligence, the company said. Apple also will expand data center capacity in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Oregon as it brings AI features to more customers.

“We are bullish on the future of American innovation,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in a news release. The Cupertino, California,-based company’s stock price was up nearly 1 percent Monday morning, to $247.95 per share.

The announcement comes after President Donald Trump said he met with Cook last week and after his administration imposed sweeping new tariffs on goods made in China—where Apple makes many of its products. Such levies are often passed on to consumers, which could lead to higher prices for the company’s smartphones, laptops and other offerings.

Trump teased Apple’s investment last week to a gathering of governors, intimating that it was a response to his administration’s trade policies.

“Yesterday, I had Tim Cook in the office from Apple,” Trump said. “He’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars and others, too. We’re going to have a lot of chip makers coming in, a lot of automakers coming in. They stopped two plants in Mexico that were under construction or started construction. They just stopped them. They’re going to build here instead because they don’t want to pay the tariffs.”

Trump campaigned on steep tariff increases, going beyond those proposed during his first administration. He floated the idea of taxing Chinese goods at 60 percent or more. Earlier this month, his administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and said it would add 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, before agreeing to delay implementation for 30 days.

Apple’s best-known products were mostly spared from tariffs during Trump’s first term, due in part to Cook’s lobbying.

Trump thanked Apple and Cook in a social media post Monday, suggesting the company wouldn’t have made the $500 billion investment were it not for “faith in what we are doing.”

In 2021, Apple said it would spend $430 billion and add 20,000 jobs in the United States over five years, plans that overlap with its latest announcement.