Andrew Ross Sorkin Tries to Downplay Apple Investing $500B in the U.S.

EXCERPT:

SORKIN: “I think one of the things we're seeing here is the president and -- and Tim Cook for example meeting last week, Tim Cook telling him about these plans in hopes that when in fact there is a decision finally made on what tariffs look like for goods being imported from China, that perhaps some of that gets some kind of relief, a carve-out, or something else. I think you're gonna be seeing a lot of these kinds of announcements. I should say some of them are very real and I don't want to discount them, but for example in -- even in this $500 billion number, it's not all new if you will. For example the production of films and TV shows on Apple+ is part of that number. So there's going to be a lot of different sort of squishy elements to this. And to put it in context, for example, Microsoft has committed to spend $80 billion a year on its AI development, and it says it needs that as well. So, there are sort of necessities that I don't -- I wouldn't say that Apple is doing this simply to placate the president or anybody else, they actually do need to be spending a large part of this money. Of course where they spend it was up for debate prior to this.”