Tech giant Apple announced Thursday that it will be bringing some manufacturing jobs back from China to the United States.
In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said the company plans to spend more than $100 million next year on building Mac computers here.
This will represent a small portion of manufacturing away from China.
“Next year we’re going to bring some production to the U.S.,” Cook said. “This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.”
Like many companies, Apple began sending a lot of its manufacturing jobs to Asia in the late '90s to take advantage of cheaper labor costs.
But with unemployment remaining stubbornly high, American companies are under increased pressure to repatriot some of these positions.
“I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job,” Cook said. “But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.”
Cook did not discuss the details of Apple's plan, but said the company is lining up partners to implement the strategy that will include more than just the final assembly of Macs.
Let's hope this starts a trend that can really get our economy going again.
