Apple To Create 20,000 Jobs At Expanded U.S. Data Centers And New Campus
iPhone maker Apple announced today that it is making immense investments in the U.S. economy including building a new campus at an as-yet unnamed location and hiring 4,000 new workers a year for the next five years, many of whom will be employed at existing data centers.
The Cupertino, California-based technology company will also spend approximately $30 billion on capital expenditures here in America. Perhaps most significantly, it will bring home about $250 billion that it had parked in offshore accounts. In so doing, the firm founded by the late Steve Jobs will write a check to Uncle Sam for the tax due in the amount of $38 billion, which Apple claims could be largest such payment ever made. Apple is apparently already the country’s largest taxpayer.
Among other things, Apple is also accelerating its support for coding and STEM education. Apple’s current U.S. workforce constitutes about 84,000 persons.
According to AppleInsider, the cash transfer probably comes in response to the tax reform bill that passed in the GOP-controlled Congress and that was signed into law by Donald Trump shortly before Christmas.
“For years the company infamously refused to repatriate billions in overseas cash unless it was granted a tax ‘holiday,’ but the company is presumably going ahead because of lower corporate tax rates advanced by the Republican Party and U.S. President Donald Trump.”
Overall, and excluding tax payments, Apple claims that its total contribution to the U.S. economy will total $350 billion through the year 2022 when new investments and what it spends on domestic suppliers and manufacturers are factored in. In a related development, Apple today broke ground on a new facility in Reno, Nevada.
Similar to other entities in corporate America, Apple is also handing out bonuses to nearly 140,000 employees around the world in the form of $2,500 stock units. It is also boosting the amount of matching funds for employee charitable donations.
Separately, Fiat-Chrysler indicated earlier this month that it is moving production of the Ram pickup truck back to the U.S. from Mexico, CNBC reported, with tax reform making up for some of the company’s cost differential, according to its CEO.
I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States. Great to see Apple follow through as a result of TAX CUTS. Huge win for American workers and the USA! https://t.co/OwXVUyLOb1
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018
Apple CEO Tim Cook told ABC News in the clip below that some, but not all, of the expansions revealed today are the result of the tax bill, which lowered the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Cook added that he hopes a big chunk of the money going to the IRS will be spent on repairing the U.S. infrastructure, which is another of the Trump administration’s initiatives.
Separately, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the principal U.S. stock market index, set a record today by closing above 26,000 points for the first time ever, AP reported.
