Apple announces $1B fund for American manufacturing

Apple will put up $1 billion to start a fund geared toward boosting advanced manufacturing in the U.S., Apple CEO Tim Cook said Wednesday.

“I’m proud to tell you that we’re creating an advanced manufacturing fund,” Cook said on CNBC’s “Mad Money.” “We’re initially putting $1 billion in the fund.”

“By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond,” he added. “Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around — those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them, because you have a service industry that builds up around them.”

Cook said Apple would announce the first investment from the fund later in May.

{mosads}The announcement appears to fit in line with President Trump’s calls to bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Cook also applauded the Trump administration’s proposal to lower the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent. 

“If you earn money globally, you don’t — you can’t bring it back into the United States unless you pay 35 percent plus your state tax,” Cook said. “And you look at this and you go, ‘This is kind of bizarre.’ “

“I think the administration — you saw that they’re really getting this and want to bring this back,” he continued. “And I hope that that comes to pass.”

Cook met with Trump in the month before he took office as part of a roundtable with tech industry executives that included Google CEO Larry Page, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.