Bob Davis
A man wearing a VR headset smiles and poses as he records himself under a large Apple logo on a store behind him.A man wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset records footage as people wait to enter an Apple Store in Beijing on June 28, 2024. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
In the early 1990s, Apple was determined to show it could continue to build computers in the United States as part of its strategy of keeping tight control over every aspect of design and production. Macintosh computers rolled off the line at one Apple factory “like a Holiday Inn toaster turns out toasted bagels,” according to a biography of Steve Jobs.
But facing bankruptcy in 1996, the company sold its Mac factory in Colorado to a U.S. contract manufacturer and started down a long road of outsourcing manufacturing, first in the United States and later in Asia. It now builds most everything it sells in China. Outsourcing has been incredibly lucrative for Apple, helping to make it one of the three most valuable companies in the world, as measured by market capitalization. But it also has made Apple frighteningly dependent on the shifting whims of Chinese politics and the priorities of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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