NEW YORK: Apple Inc is shifting manufacturing of its new Mac Pro desktop computer to China from the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The move comes at a time when the Trump administration has threatened to impose new levies to cover nearly all imports from China and pressured Apple and other manufacturers to make their products in the United States if they want to avoid tariffs.

Last week, Apple asked its major suppliers to assess the cost implications of moving 15-30 per cent of their production capacity from China to Southeast Asia, according to a Nikkei report.

“If true, suggests to me that Apple has tremendous confidence that the US and China will be able to solve their trade dispute and do so in the near-future,” D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte said in an email.

China is a key market for Apple as well as a major production center for its devices. The company got nearly 18pc of its total revenue from Greater China in the quarter ended March. Apple’s Mac Pro, a $6,000 machine used by creative professionals, has been facing waning demand, the Journal said.

The company does not break out sales numbers for its Mac Pro machines. The desktop is part of the company’s Mac line of products, which accounted for less than 10pc of Apple’s total sales in 2018. In 2018, Apple sold about 18 million Mac products, compared with about 218m iPhones.

“Like all of our products, the new Mac Pro is designed and engineered in California and includes components from several countries including the United States,” an Apple spokesman said.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2019