Can Trump Bring Apple Back to U.S. Soil?

President-elect Donald Trump made it very clear throughout his campaign that he wants more products boasting the “made in America” label.

Trump, who recently received high praise for striking a deal with air conditioning manufacturer Carrier and saved nearly 1,100 American jobs from moving to Mexico, has now sunk his teeth into Apple.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, "Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron, the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the U.S."

While Pegatron “declined” to humor Apple’s request, Foxconn has been formulating a plan. However, according to Nikkei’s source, “Making iPhones in the U.S. means the cost will more than double."

Bringing back jobs to America was a staple of Trump’s presidential campaign, and while speaking at an event at Liberty University in January, Trump said, "We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries."

However, that task might be tougher than he thinks.

President Obama wanted the same thing, but former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs told the President during a meeting back in 2010, “Those jobs aren't coming back," according to a report by the New York Times.

Trip Miller, managing partner at hedge fund Gullane Capital Partners in Memphis, Tennessee, which counts Apple among the fund’s “long” holdings, said it’s “highly unrealistic” for Apple to move stateside, and what Trump should really be focusing on is making America a more desirable location for business.

“The most important thing would be to create an environment in the U.S. — whether it’s taxes, regulation, labor force, where companies are attracted to and want to do more manufacturing in the U.S.,” said Miller. “It’s the idea of dangle the carrot instead of wave a stick. Instead of finding ways to force people to be here, or penalize them for not being here, create an environment where everyone wants to be here and do more business here than they currently are doing on the production side.”

There are many hurdles that would have to be addressed if Apple were to uproot all of its business operations, obstacles that would undoubtedly cost the consumer more money.

On the other hand, Trump did co-author “The Art of The Deal,” and met with former Vice President Al Gore on Monday regarding climate change. Gore also happens to be on the board of Apple.

However, unless Trump can get other companies on board to manufacture in America, it really won’t make much of a difference.

“When you look at a company, even the size of Apple, the fact that they’re creating a high dollar, high margin product might be good for a few cities where they might put their production, but the impact of only one company — I just don’t think it’s that major in the scope of a country of 300 plus million people.”