No Near Term On-Ramp for US High-Tech Manufacturing
It takes decades. Multiple. We are approaching 20 years of iPhones with a plethora of incentives, learnings, and talent + supplier competitive edges distributed globally.
Apple manufacturing a major product line entirely in the US is as layered as the world's largest rubber band ball. And let's be honest, the "major product line" gold mine here would be iPhones intended for the US market, if not more, but that could be a huge stretch.
While Apple's recent attempts to direct specific supplier components to specific markets is a creative one, it highlights some key challenges in bringing iPhone manufacturing to the US.
Quoting narrowly from Daring Fireball, quoting The New York Time:
Many officials appear unsympathetic to Apple's desire to buy Chinese chips, because the company has promised for years to move more of its supply chain to the United States but has made only small steps toward that goal, four people said.
Industry analysts also say CXMT's technology still trails its foreign competitors, in part because the company's access to the most sophisticated chip-making equipment is restricted.
And therein lies the single-most limiting factor in the layers of this elegant, yet tangled mess. While every component has some level of sophistication and technique tied to its manufacturing or assembly, some are vastly more so than others, namely the A-series chips (especially the 2nm and eventual 1.4nm chips).
Another major limitation includes talent, including wage expectations / cost of living, skills that would need to be learned, which itself depends on skills that the knowledge holders are willing to teach. When countries restrict the very movement of machinery and talent with the necessary skills to setup and operate it, you can't simply will this sort of manufacturing capability to the US into existence. It becomes a geo-politically sensitive topic that Apple cannot handle alone.
It is also in every supplier's best interest to protect their own competitive advantages. Those may include harboring individual talents and expertise in their respective areas of the supply chain, of which there are many. Centralizing all of that talent within the US alone would not only cost more, but to the main point, it would also take a long time.