Apple’s Texas Manufacturing Site, Energy Power Picks, State of Software 8/13/26

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**Brian Sullivan** (1:03)
The markets, ad records, and some big names hit new all-time highs. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. With Kelly, I am Brian. Leading the markets once again, what else?
Tech and the AI trade. A big event happening right now in Houston, Texas. Apple expanding its manufacturing. CEO Tim Cook speaking live at this hour.

**Kelly Evans** (1:20)
Plus, refiners are, well, on fire. The energy stocks are back in focus. But the real heat is in this trade. Look at these refining aids here today. Tight fuel supplies, resilient demand, and stronger crack spreads, as they're known, are lifting profit expectations for the group. The question now, can they keep running if crude stays volatile? Our energy playbook is coming up. But let's begin with some breaking news this hour. Apple opening a new manufacturing site down in Houston, Texas. Mackenzie Sigalos is here with all the details.

**MacKenzie Sigalos** (1:50)
So, Kelly, what we're looking at is a Houston facility expanding, basically doubling the footprint that Apple already has set up there. So, they make AI servers now, they're going to be starting to make the Mac minis. This is more of a consumer facing product and they're opening something called this American manufacturing facility that's essentially going to be a training ground for new talent.

**Kelly Evans** (2:11)
Then we should emphasize, Apple has built out, I don't know if you still have that map, but they've built out quite a bit of US manufacturing locations. This is just the latest. But this push, this is not the first one. They are now trying to do something here at scale and with a product that is pretty recognizable.

**MacKenzie Sigalos** (2:29)
It all goes toward that bigger $600 billion number of what they're going to invest in the US. They've also said that all the refunds that they got from tariffs will go into US manufacturing. So we're talking about Texas, but we're also talking about investments in Arizona, in Utah, in Michigan. Part of that is just in the supply chain, but it's also in some of these first-party construction sites. But what's different here, because in Austin you've got the Mac Pros, that's a $6,000 plus product.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:55)
This is consumer facing.

**Brian Sullivan** (2:57)
That's not all that's different here. Why are we leading the show by talking about Apple? We'll go back to that video. We're leading the show by talking about Apple because it's not just Apple.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is on site. This is a big White House push as well, is it not? Tim Cook is going to be there with Commerce Secretary Lutnick in Houston. This has got to be one of those things that I'm guessing the White House is probably also going to talk about.

**MacKenzie Sigalos** (3:27)
Absolutely. This is basically Apple showing that President Trump's big push to bring more manufacturing back on shore is working. That's why you've got Howard Lutnick speaking, you've got Tim Cook speaking, which by the way, we are in his final days as CEO. This is something that Tim Cook is known for, supply chain appeasing the White House. This is really a master class in keeping the White House happy. And also what's going on at the same time is that Apple is trying to get commerce to allow them to use Chinese memory chips. You know who's in charge of that? Howard Lutnick.

**Kelly Evans** (3:56)
That's a great point. And here's by the way, a map showing some of its other US manufacturing investments. I mean, you can rattle off these states, Mac. It's certainly not just Texas at this point.

**MacKenzie Sigalos** (4:06)
Definitely not. And part of this is, you know, TSMC's fab in Arizona and getting some of these chips made with Texas Instruments. So it's more on the supplier side, but this is a really great way for the Trump administration to say, a device that you're using every day, the Mac Mini that's used for AI agents run at home, that's made here because Trump has wanted the iPhone made in America for a while. Apple's not going to be able to do that. They did shift, what, one in four iPhones now made in India, so they've shifted it away from China. But this is a really big win for the White House.