"By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond," Cook said. "Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them."

Apple will announce the first beneficiary of its fund later in May. Cook touched on other areas of interest for Apple, including its intention to support programs that help train developers and get more people coding. Apple will announce details about this endeavor in the summer.

"We're really looking at this thing deeply," Cook said. "How do we grow our employee base? How do we grow the developer base? How do we grow manufacturing? You will see us bring things to market in all of those areas across this year."

One of President Donald Trump's rallying cries during the campaign was the idea that he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. In early 2016, Trump said he'd force Apple to "build their damn computers in this country," though in reality there's no teeth to such a threat and the company still assembles its gadgets abroad.