苹果CFO淡化在美国国内创造制造业岗位的可能性

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.

苹果(Apple)一名高管周二表示，如果美国放松税法，该公司将向股东返还更多资金。他还淡化了苹果利用其过剩的现金为美国创造新的制造业岗位的可能性。

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.

苹果首席财务官卢卡?马埃斯特里(Luca Maestri)的这番言论，可能会令该公司走向特朗普(Trump)政府的对立面——特朗普政府希望通过减税和一些旨在推动苹果等科技企业把存在海外账户的资金汇回国内的优惠措施，来提振美国的就业。

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

马埃斯特里发表上述言论之际，苹果股价再次创下新高。

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”.

在旧金山举行的一次高盛(Goldman Sachs)投资者大会上，有人问马埃斯特里，若税率降低、令苹果能够将其存在海外的2300亿美元资金中的一部分汇回国内，苹果最优先考虑的事项将是什么。这位首席财务官答道，那将“给我们返还资金的活动带来更多灵活性”。

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.

他在后来的访谈中暗示，对苹果而言，扩大在美国的制造基地将是困难的。而扩大制造业正是美国总统唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的关键政策之一。“如今，科技业的供应链基本上都不在美国，”马埃斯特里说。

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

这位苹果高管还否定了开征边界调整税的主意，这项主意也赢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.”

“我们很难想象边境税会给美国经济带来什么好处，”马埃斯特里说，“它是一项最终会加重终端消费者负担的税。它意味着美元将不得不从当前的价位大幅升值，而美元当前已然过于强势了。”

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

他接着说，这可能会给美国的竞争力和就业带来有害的影响，“感觉不像能得到积极的结果”。

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.

为规避这种税改带来的冲击，苹果可以扩大其美国制造活动的规模。马埃斯特里表示，苹果“此时此刻很难推测”特朗普政府在这方面的政策。

“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，“我们在华盛顿提出的一个论点是，过去十年我们为美国经济做出了很大的贡献”，在国内投资上花了数十亿美元，在美国创造了约200万个应用开发和零部件供应岗位。“记住这一点很重要，”马埃斯特里说。