Apple’s Trump strategy is the same as its strategy for smartphone dominance

Today Apple announced it would be spending $500 billion to expand its manufacturing and AI footprint in the US.

It’s a big round number carefully doled out over President Donald Trump’s four years in office and specific to the leader’s areas of interest, the latest political salvo from “10% politician” Tim Cook in a long-running gambit to ingratiate Apple with Trump and inoculate it against his anger.

It also appears to be the same strategy Apple has long employed as a way to gain product dominance: do something everyone else is doing. Late. In better packaging.

Apple wasn’t the first to invent the personal computer or a digital music player or the smartphone. But it did later come and combine a lot of existing technology into one beautiful, high-performing, well-constructed package that worked intuitively — the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone — and was expertly announced at Apple’s product events.

Now Apple is wielding this strategy to fight against the administration’s preferred stick: tariffs. Apple is facing 10% tariffs on imports from China, where it manufactures the vast majority of its phones, which make up the its biggest revenue source.

These days the coin of the realm is spending big in the US. Like other tech companies, Apple is pledging investment in the US. Unlike most other companies, it has a lot more money to throw around and it knows how to use it.

The Wall Street Journal did a back-of-the-envelope calculation using analyst estimates of operating expenses and capex for the next four years to determine that that eye-watering $500 billion sum is basically what the iPhone maker would have spent anyway.

But with Apple’s gift for packaging flair, it looks like a gift to Trump — a new, beautiful reveal designed just for him.

This strategy has also worked for Cook before. During Trump’s first administration, Apple committed $350 billion to the US economy and was largely exempted from Trump’s tariffs on China. Apple did the same during the Biden administration. Importantly, the latest commitment is its biggest ever.

The move seems to be working again. On Monday, Trump took credit for Apple’s move on Truth Social, saying, “Thank you Tim Cook and Apple!!!”