Don't know what Apple is doing, but it is common for firms to manufacture goods overseas, then put a small finishing touch in the US to get a Made/Assembled in USA label for PR or tax purposes.
The article states that "screwdriver" or other non-transformative assembly of foreign components does not qualify. There must be a substantive transformation of the parts to qualify as "assembly"
Victoria's Secret used to (still does?) make their products in Honduras and then send the essentially-finished garments to the US, where inmates in private prisons sew on "Made in USA" labels. Because the "Made in USA" labels are sewn on, that counts as the final step in the assembly process, even though literally nothing but the "Made in USA" tag is even made in the USA.
Federal law requires that products labeled as "Made in the USA" be "all or virtually all" made in the United States. The Federal Trade Commission's guidelines [0] make clear that sewing a "Made in the USA" tag on a foreign-made article of clothing would violate that requirement.
However, note that Northern Marianas produces products with the "Made in the USA" label, despite not being in, near, or part of the USA, and having a history of terrible labor practices and corruption.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is an unincorporated territory of the United States, and its citizens are US citizens. (And I used to live there, as it happens.) Its relationship with the US is similar to Puerto Rico's.
Accordingly, products made in the CNMI may be labeled as "Made in USA" (subject to the same rules I cited above). But after the labor scandals of the 1990s, many well known clothing brands that kept their factories there switched to labels like "Made in Northern Marianas, USA".
Since 2009, the CNMI no longer makes its own immigration policy. [0] The islands are now subject to federal immigration law, and all provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act will be in effect there from 2014. By that date, the CNMI's workforce will be governed by the same laws as elsewhere in the United States and there will no longer be any real basis for controversy over its "Made in USA" labeling.
I visit Saipan last spring (home to 90% of the population) and it was rather sad. All the factories were closed, tourism was petering out and there were shopping centers being recaptured by the jungle.
The Northern end of Island is spectacularly beautiful and Japanese tourists still would visit there. In the whole of the Micronesia area, Asian tourists outnumber Americans by something like 20 to 1 and the US seems increasingly irrelevant even on the Islands it owns. Interesting.
They may have since changed the requirements, or there may be a loophole elsewhere, or people may simply be disregarding the law. As noted below, however, it's pretty simple to find many accounts of this with some simple Googling.
Having inmates stitch up designer undergarments seems like a bad idea. Male inmates or female inmates, either way it seems like it could bring up some emotions that prison guards won't be happy with.
California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria's Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace "Made in Honduras" labels on garments with "Made in the USA."
Well ok what is the minimum then? Does epoxy gluing qualify? Plugin in ram module and glue case together?
At the same time I kind of doubt this is done much for PR purposes. Can't see really people dropping or picking Apple products in favor of alternatives because of the assembly origin.
There's absolutely no doubt that all the components were made overseas, the boards made and populated overseas, and probably the aluminum casing as well though that is conceivably Made in USA. The glass might be made in USA, a lot of Corning was at least recently.
It's final assembly, screwing the parts together. Gluing the screen. No screws in the screen, so perhaps Apple imagines that connecting cables and gluing the screen counts as assembly, and who is to say otherwise.
