AUSTIN (Nexstar) —As President Donald Trump returns to Texas to tour an Apple facility where the company’s Mac Pros are manufactured, the state’s leading business group applauds his focus on the Lone Star State.
Apple will invest $1 billion to build a campus in north Austin and plans to hire more than 5,000 new employees. The company will build its new Mac Pro in Austin while many of the company’s other products are assembled in China.
Texas Association of Business president and chief executive officer Judge Jeff Moseley said the announcement showcases the value of bringing offshore jobs to Texas and boosting the state’s economy.
“Bringing a manufacturing operation here and expanding it is really a Texas story,” Moseley said.
“We’re very pleased that this president is focused on trade and on investment and the fact that Apple is investing again in Texas is really big news,” Moseley said.
Moseley said it was important to celebrate the business milestones in the state and put Texas in the international spotlight. The visit is also important politically for Trump, who has visited the Lone Star State nearly a dozen times since taking office. This is Trump’s seventh visit to Texas this year.
“It demonstrates the value of government and corporations coming together to grow jobs and paycheck,” he explained. “There’s really few things that government does that’s as significant as having a stable robust solid economy and announcing new jobs, bringing jobs from offshore onshore and bringing capital into the economy.”
Critics of Trump’s economic record, which includes tit-for-tat tariffs on countries like China, argue his policies argue bringing too many jobs to Texas leaves already packed communities worrying about infrastructure to sustain the growth.
“Obviously we’re excited about the growth of Apple or any company that brings good-paying manufacturing jobs to this community, that’s important, what we think are trying to say is that is not the whole story of this economy,” Rick Levy, Texas AFL-CIO President, said at a roundtable Wednesday morning with local and state Democratic leaders. “And that a photo opp highlighting one corporate decision to bring jobs to this community doesn’t outweigh the massive damage and wreckage that’s occurring in other parts of this state and this country.”
State Rep. John Bucy, D-Cedar Park, said liberals in Texas hope to capitalize on “Trump-style” Republican politics in 2020.
“Texas Democrats are committed to working past the failed Trump-Republican policies,” Bucy said.
Moseley said such a large state like Texas has the room to grow physically and financially.
“The good news about texas is that we have a lot of room to grow and we have a lot of land around our cities in texas and we’re not locked in by mountain range or oceans,” he explained. “We really can bring affordable housing and that gives us a strategic advantage and so we know Texas is big enough to grow a lot more jobs and we must bring these jobs to have a robust healthy tax base, because that’s what’s going to ultimately pay for our public education, pay for our healthcare and other social services.”
Alyssa Goard contributed to this report.
