Apple to make new Mac Pro in China

Apple will manufacture a new version of its Mac Pro computer in China, shifting production of the only major product the company has assembled in the United States outside the country, a person familiar with the plans said Friday.

The move, reported Friday by the Wall Street Journal, will most likely draw the ire of President Trump, who has pressed Apple to shift more of its manufacturing to the United States amid a continuing trade war with China. The person familiar with Apple’s plans was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Trump, who is scheduled to meet with President Xi Jinping of China on Saturday at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, said during the 2016 campaign, “We’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.”

The Mac Pro, a highend desktop computer that sells for $6,000, accounts for a small portion of Apple’s overall sales, but it is a rare example of a U.S. technology company trying to do more manufacturing in the United States.

Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, went on primetime television in 2012 to announce that the company would make a Mac computer in the United States, the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers. The topoftheline Mac Pro, built in a facility in Austin, Texas, would come with the inscription: “Assembled in USA,” Cook said.

The production of hightech products is a key element of the current trade tensions between the United States and China. The fight has put Apple, in particular, in an awkward position because China is also one of the biggest markets for products like its iPhone.

Apple said that assembly was just one step in a broad production process that creates jobs in a number of countries. The company said that it had worked with manufacturing facilities in 30 states and that it had spent $60 billion with over 9,000 suppliers across the United States last year.