J.D. Vance attacks Apple with baseless slave labor claim

As the U.S. election roadshow continues to run until November’s polling day, candidates and their parties are continuing to try and gain column-inches any way they can. For J.D. Vance, the Republican vice president nominee running alongside former president Donald Trump, this has now led to him attacking Apple with about the most nonsensical claim possible.

On Thursday, Vance used his appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk about taxes and tariffs. However, as part of his discussions about how companies relying on China for manufacturing should be taxed, he had to have a little dig at Apple.

“Do I think Apple is an evil company? No,” Vance offers as a vague compliment to the company ahead of a more damning accusation.

“Do I think that sometimes they [Apple] benefit from Chinese slave labor?” Vance continued. “Yeah, and that’s pretty sick.”

It is unclear exactly where Vance gets the idea from, other than social media influencers who also have no idea what they’re talking about or have a clear agenda. Presumably, the guy is smart and we know he has an iPhone.

It would have been ludicrously easy to find out the truth. Instead he made the active choice to make the claim and rile up the devout.

Here — we’re going to make the search even shorter than 30 seconds.

On Apple’s side, it has put effort into shutting down any operations where slave labor is discovered. The Apple Supplier Code of Conduct and Supplier Responsibility Standards include protections and requirements that apply to all suppliers, including prohibiting forced or slave labor.

In cases where suppliers were allegedly found to be violating human rights, Apple has consistently stepped in to investigate the matter. For example, following allegations against supplier O-Film Technology in 2020, Apple used independent third-party investigators and surprise audits.

In the end, Apple found no evidence of wrongdoing. At the time, Apple insisted it would continue monitoring.

With Apple actively working to avoid the use of slave labor, Vance’s comment has no basis in fact.

Vance continued the Apple attack by offering “I think that a company that wants to benefit from American markets should also have to pay American workers a fair wage.”

Evidently, he isn’t aware that Apple raised the starting wage for its retail workforce to $22 an hour in May 2022. It did this two years ago.

Or maybe he feels that $22 per hour isn’t a decent wage at all. After all, it is a mere three times the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and $7 more than the $15 level that is frequently campaigned about — but not by him or his party.

According to federal disclosures, Vance possesses between $4 million and $11 million in assets, including stakes in two businesses and a hefty brokerage account. He may not even be aware or fully care what minimum wage actually is anymore.

Vance went on to declare that there should be higher tariffs to prevent companies from “shipping jobs overseas.” By this, he means manufacturing outside of U.S. borders.

The majority of Apple’s manufacturing uses overseas partners.

This echoes sentiments from Trump in wanting to place tariffs between 60% and 100% on goods shipped in from China. Other countries aren’t safe either with tariffs of 10% to 20% on imported goods in general also on the chopping block.

The tariffs sound like Apple CEO Tim Cook will have to cozy up to Trump once more to avoid the effects of another Trump-China trade war.

And Vance’s party insists that companies will eat these charges, or the Chinese manufacturer will. That has never been the case.

In every tariff case, US companies have hiked prices to offset the extra fees.

Even if such tariffs came into force, Apple’s supply chain could work to mitigate and minimize the impact. The company is in the middle of a diversification effort, expanding operations in Vietnam and India, with the new manufacturing bases able to offset the China-specific fees.

The comments against Apple are part of the long and grueling slog that is the election cycle. Unfortunately, as candidates seek to gain the most attention from prospective voters, politicians often include accusations that are wildly off base from reality.

For example, as a U.S. senator for Ohio, he has repeated claims that Haitian illegal immigrants in Springfield “draining social services and generally causing chaos.” Vance added that there were reports of their pets being abducted and eaten by the immigrants.

The off-the-wall claim was echoed by Trump during his first debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, Trump asserted, adding that cats and other pets were being consumed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook [left] talking to former president Donald Trump [right]

Fact-checking resulted in some pushback against Trump, with Springfield officials insisting there were “no credible reports” that it actually happened.

However, Trump insisted it to be true, as he saw people talking about it on television — meaning alt-right YouTube channels and his running mate. Vance’s post to X was intended to back up Trump’s televised outburst.

Since the debate and the continued accusations of improper petcare that to date, he wants his followers to repeat, the increased attention on Springfield has led to more inevitable actions. On Thursday morning, the police responded to a bomb threat.

There was also Vance’s 2021 jibe against the Biden administration being a “bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

The 2024 resurfacing of the comment didn’t go well, with Vance playing it off as a sarcastic remark. Pop star Taylor Swift brought it back up again by signing off her endorsement of Harris with the term “Childless Cat Lady.”

Predictably, Vance took the bait. He proposed that Americans aren’t going to be “influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”

You know, just like a politician that has up to $11 million in disclosed assets.

Vance could’ve let the jibe go. He had to open his mouth and attack someone famous enough to have 284 million followers on Instagram. It predictably went about as well as you’d expect.

With just under two months before the polls open and voting can take place, you can expect even more claims to surface from political parties as they try to keep relevant.

Some will actually be factual, but not in this case. American elections are better when there’s at least a passing acquaintance with the truth, and there’s none to be found here.