When it was announced Monday that Apple CEO Tim Cook would attend U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address as a guest of the First Lady, many predicted that the Cupertino company would find a mention during the night’s events. That prediction came true tonight, as Mr. Obama mentioned Apple during his address, noting that the Cupertino company was planning to move some manufacturing back to the United States.
Image via FOX News and MacRumors.
From Mr. Obama’s remarks (emphasis added):
Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.
News broke in late December that Apple would begin to return manufacturing of some of its products to the United States after years of contracting with Chinese firms. After some speculation that a desktop Mac would be the first product in the current generation of manufacturing to be assembled in the United States, rumors from DigiTimes surfaced suggesting that the Mac mini would take the honor of bearing the “Assembled in the U.S.A.” label.
Apple was also recently brought into the arena of national politics during the 2012 U.S. Presidential race, when the company was mentioned by both Mr. Obama and Republican nominee Governor Mitt Romney as a prime example of the way that American manufacturing had changed.
Another Apple connection to the State of the Union address occurred in 2012, when Steve Jobs’s wife, Laurene Powell, was in attendance to represent her husband’s contributions to American ingenuity after the iconic founder’s death in late 2012.