With pressure mounting on U.S. companies to build products at home, Apple is reportedly seeking to expand manufacturing at one of its plants in Arizona.
According to Business Insider, Apple has requested to conduct “high-tech manufacturing” at its facility in Mesa, Arizona. The company is also seeking permission to build data-center server gear there as well.
A notification published in the Federal Register on Monday said Apple was looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce "finished products" in a special zone that exempts it from customs duty payments. […]
The filings come as Apple has come under fire by President-elect Donald Trump for producing the iPhone and other popular products overseas.
The Arizona effort would mark a rare instance of a US tech company manufacturing and assembling a finished product domestically, where labor costs are higher. Apple's effort appears limited to equipment for its internal operations, however, rather than for a mass-market consumer product.
The Apple manufacturing facility in Mesa was first announced in 2013, creating roughly 2,000 jobs. Two years later, the company announced it would be spending $2 billion to invest in the command center for its global networks. Now the company's looking to expand its cloud services in an effort to compete with Google and Amazon.
Last month President-elect Trump said he’ll create incentives for corporations like Apple to “build a big plant in the United States.”