Apple Inc has been lobbying the US government on tax breaks to support domestic chip production, suggesting the iPhone maker is keen to move more of its supply chain to the US.
In second and third-quarter disclosure reports, the company said that it lobbied officials from the US Department of the Treasury, Congress and the White House on tax topics including “issues related to tax credits for domestic semiconductor production.”
Since releasing its first custom processor in 2010, chips have become a major performance differentiator for Apple.
The company designs some of these components in house, but outsources production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電).
Many other parts for Apple devices are made in China. That has exposed the company to tariffs and other risks from a trade dispute between the US and China. Taiwan, where TSMC is based, has also become an increasing focus of geopolitical tension between China and the US.
Apple’s recent lobbying coincides with a push by the company and its partners to move some production away from China and even back to the US in a few cases.
There is also a broader effort by the US semiconductor industry to get government support for increased domestic production.
Apple’s US lobbying efforts are now mostly led by company veteran Tim Powderly, who was promoted around the time Cynthia Hogan, Apple’s prior top US lobbyist, left to join former US vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Earlier this year, TSMC said that it would build a US$12 billion chip plant in Arizona, and the company has been lobbying officials there for tax breaks.
In 2013, Apple started making a low-volume Mac Pro computer in the US.
Last year, it started using the same plant in Texas to conduct final assembly for a new version. That decision came after the company was granted tariff breaks.
Apple also sources components from several chipmakers that build some of their products in the US, including Broadcom Inc and Texas Instruments Inc.
Apple also has started using Qualcomm Inc again for iPhone modems, and the San Diego, California-based chipmaker builds some products domestically via production partner GlobalFoundries Inc.
Intel Corp, the current manufacturer of Mac’s main processors, builds some of its chips in the US.
However, when Apple moves to its own Mac chips next month, that would mean shifting production of that component to Taiwan.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS