蘋果CFO淡化在美國國內創造製造業崗位的可能性

A senior Apple executive said on Tuesday that the company would return more capital to shareholders if US tax laws were relaxed and played down the likelihood that the company would use its excess cash to create new American manufacturing jobs.

蘋果(Apple)一名高管週二表示，如果美國放鬆稅法，該公司將向股東返還更多資金。他還淡化了蘋果利用其過剩的現金爲美國創造新的製造業崗位的可能性。

The comments by Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, could put the company on a collision course with the Trump administration, which hopes to boost US jobs through tax cuts and concessions aimed at getting companies such as the tech group to repatriate cash stranded in overseas accounts.

蘋果首席財務官盧卡?馬埃斯特里(Luca Maestri)的這番言論，可能會令該公司走向特朗普(Trump)政府的對立面——特朗普政府希望通過減稅和一些旨在推動蘋果等科技企業把存在海外賬戶的資金匯回國內的優惠措施，來提振美國的就業。

Mr Maestri’s comments came as Apple stock hit another new high.

馬埃斯特里發表上述言論之際，蘋果股價再次創下新高。

Asked at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in San Francisco what the top priority would be if the tax rate was lowered, allowing the company to repatriate some of its $230bn in overseas funds, the Apple CFO said it would give “additional flexibility around our capital return activities”.

在舊金山舉行的一次高盛(Goldman Sachs)投資者大會上，有人問馬埃斯特里，若稅率降低、令蘋果能夠將其存在海外的2300億美元資金中的一部分匯回國內，蘋果最優先考慮的事項將是什麼。這位首席財務官答道，那將“給我們返還資金的活動帶來更多靈活性”。

Later in the interview, he suggested that it would be difficult for Apple to increase its manufacturing base in the US, which is one of President Donald Trump’s key policies. “Essentially the supply chain for the tech industry is not in the US today,” Mr Maestri said.

他在後來的訪談中暗示，對蘋果而言，擴大在美國的製造基地將是困難的。而擴大製造業正是美國總統唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的關鍵政策之一。“如今，科技業的供應鏈基本上都不在美國，”馬埃斯特里說。

The Apple executive also rejected the idea of a border adjustment tax, which has also won support from the Trump administration..

這位蘋果高管還否定了開徵邊界調整稅的主意，這項主意也贏得了特朗普政府的支持。

“It is very hard for us to imagine that a border tax would be good for the US economy,” Mr Maestri said. “It is a tax that would end up burdening the end consumer. It presupposes as an idea that the dollar would have to appreciate very significantly from where it is today, which is already too strong.”

“我們很難想象邊境稅會給美國經濟帶來什麼好處，”馬埃斯特里說，“它是一項最終會加重終端消費者負擔的稅。它意味着美元將不得不從當前的價位大幅升值，而美元當前已然過於強勢了。”

With a potentially detrimental impact to US competitiveness and jobs, he added, “it doesn’t feel like that would be a positive outcome”.

他接着說，這可能會給美國的競爭力和就業帶來有害的影響，“感覺不像能得到積極的結果”。

One way for Apple to avoid being hit by such a tax change would be to increase the scale of its US manufacturing. Mr Maestri said it was “very, very difficult to speculate at this point” on the Trump administration’s policies in that area.

爲規避這種稅改帶來的衝擊，蘋果可以擴大其美國製造活動的規模。馬埃斯特里表示，蘋果“此時此刻很難推測”特朗普政府在這方面的政策。

“One of the points that we are making in Washington is the fact that we have been a very large contributor to the US economy during the last decade,” he said, spending billions of dollars in local investment and creating some 2m jobs in app developers and US-based component suppliers. “It’s important to keep that in mind,” Mr Maestri said.

他表示，“我們在華盛頓提出的一個論點是，過去十年我們爲美國經濟做出了很大的貢獻”，在國內投資上花了數十億美元，在美國創造了約200萬個應用開發和零部件供應崗位。“記住這一點很重要，”馬埃斯特里說。