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Apple Plans 'High-Tech Manufacturing' of Data-Center Gear in Arizona (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Business Insider report: Apple is seeking permission to conduct "high-tech manufacturing" and to build data-center server gear in a Mesa, Arizona, facility, according to a notice published Monday by the US federal government. A notification published in the Federal Register on Monday said Apple was looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce "finished products" in a special zone that exempts it from customs duty payments. "Apple Inc has repurposed the site as a global data command center that will conduct high-tech manufacturing of finished data center cabinets for other data centers," according to a document filed by Mesa on behalf of Apple in June and made public Monday. [...] The Arizona effort would mark a rare instance of a US tech company manufacturing and assembling a finished product domestically, where labor costs are higher. Apple's effort appears limited to equipment for its internal operations, however, rather than for a mass-market consumer product.
They already got it:
"Foreign-trade zones are essentially outside US customs territory, which means companies can avoid duties when exporting or importing merchandise. The US government supports the zones to help create jobs through "the encouragement of operations in the United States which, for customs reasons, might otherwise have been carried on abroad."
"On its domestic sales, Apple would be able to choose the duty rate during customs entry procedures that applies to finished server assembly cabinets (duty-free) for the foreign-status materials/components noted below and in the existing scope of authority," the notice continues.
Apple legally dodges stiff import duty.
1. The import duties are not "stiff". They are only a few percent. ... but without the waiver, Apple would be entitled to a refund on those duties anyway, so the net result is just simplifying the paperwork.
2. Apple is not "dodging" them. The import duties would still apply for any imported components if the final product is consumed domestically. But no duties would be paid if the final product is exported
Who's winning here? Looks to me like it isn't the American People.
A modest number of jobs will be created. Unnecessary bureaucratic overhead will be eliminated. How is that not a win?