Apple Plans to 'Give Back' in Form of $1B Fund

Apple, long criticized for making its products overseas, is planning to give American manufacturing a major boost, CEO Tim Cook says. Cook told Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money, Wednesday that the company is starting a $1 billion fund to help create advanced manufacturing jobs in the US. He said the company wants to be the "ripple in the pond." "Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs ... those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them," Cook explained. Apple says its products support around 2 million American jobs, though it only directly employs about 80,000 people in the US.

Cook told CNBC that he believes a company should have values—and one of those values should be "giving back" to the community. "We give back through our work in the environment, in running the company on renewable energy," he said. "We give back in job creation." He said the fund's first investment will be made this month. The Wall Street Journal notes that Apple—which is sitting on a $257 billion mountain of cash and cash equivalents—was slammed by President Trump during his campaign for shifting production overseas. After his victory, Trump vowed "to get Apple to build a great plant" in the US. (Workers are finally moving in at the campus that was Steve Jobs' final project.)