Apple Is Bringing Electronics Manufacturing back to the U.S.

Tim Cook has good news for all you patriotic Apple fanboys and girls. Starting next year -- or starting a few weeks ago depending on who you talk to -- Apple will begin manufacturing one of its existing Mac lines in the United States. Cook made the big reveal in interviews with Brian Williams from NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek, his first interviews since taking over for Steve Jobs last year. It's pretty cool that Apple cares about America after all, but the timing and tone of the announcement makes the company's move feel like a PR stunt. But maybe that's just what all we get when companies make the gamble to bring manufacturing jobs back home.

If anything, Apple's move to manufacture is a nice gesture. It's not much more than that, for now, though. Cook said that the company will be investing $100 million in U.S. manufacturing, which amounts to a very tiny fraction of the company's cash-on-hand and an even tinier fraction of its revenue. It's unclear exactly which Macs will be American-made, but since Apple bloggers spotted iMacs with "Assembled in America" stamped on the box a few days ago, we're guessing it's the iMac line. The fact that the new, razor-thin iMacs go on sale Friday, the day after Cook's manufacturing announcement, makes this an educated guess. Said bloggers traced the American iMacs back to Freemont, California, the location of the original Mac manufacturing facilities back in the 1980s. Sources told Motherboard on Thursday that "Made in America" stickers are starting to show up on the machines in Apple stores.

Let's talk about this order of operations for a second. If Apple's been running a plant in California at least long enough to get the computers to market, they've surely been positioning this announcement for maximum media exposure. Look at the details. Just a few months after getting heaps of bad press for squalid working conditions at the Foxconn factories in China, where iPhones and iPads are made, Apple leaves a few clues about its plans out there for the blogosphere to notice, and the fanboys start rumoring away at them. Then a few days later, Tim Cook comes out of his cave and gives the first interview as CEO, verifying the rumors. As soon as the news was out there, the new American-made product was already in stores. That's pretty close to what happens when Apple fires up its PR machine to launch a new iPhone or iPad.

Apple's not the only company moving manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and getting a ton of good press for it. Earlier this year, Google beat Apple to the punch by announcing that its strange-looking new set top box for streaming video and music, the Nexus Q, would be built in the U.S. They went big with the news, announcing the Nexus Q at their annual I/O developers conference, and they got their headlines. Apparently the product wasn't even close to ready, as Google announced just a few weeks later that they were indefinitely postponing the product's release. Nevertheless, here we are six months later talking about how Google makes things in the U.S. Good trick, Google!

Like I said a second ago, though, moving manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. as a PR stunt might just be as good as it gets. As Tim Cook said in his recent interviews and his old boss Steve Jobs said a couple of years ago, American workers just can't match the manufacturing skills of Chinese workers. It's been a long time since the heyday of the American factory, and the economy has shifted towards other industries. They're not the only ones that feel this way, though.

The Harvard Business Review pointed to American workers' lack of skills in explaining why the Kindle would sadly never be built in the U.S. So Americans might be able to build iMacs, but if even the workers at Foxconn, the world's biggest electronics manufacturer, are having trouble building the iPhone 5, it would be impossible for the tenderfoots over here in the States. It makes perfect sense for a company like Apple to give into the pressure to build things in America by moving a tiny sliver of its manufacturing over here. That way, they get the good will without  having to sacrifice their bottom line.

But maybe I'm being too cynical about the whole things. There are actually some solid economic incentives for companies to start taking steps to moving manufacturing back home. Wages are on the rise in China, and they're falling here in the United States. Also, since the U.S. is Apple's biggest market right now, the company would stand to save a lot of money on logistics in order to get the products in consumers' hands. It's hard to say if the savings are  more or less valuable than the good branding, though. Even Foxconn is expanding its U.S. operations. Why? Foxconn spokesperson Louis Woo told Bloomberg, "We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there."

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