When President Trump for the first time in 2018 first pushed tariffs to China, Apple began to move more iPad and Airpod production to Vietnam and iPhone to India.
But with Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, this strategy could retreat for the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that the United States would put 46 percent on Vietnam and 26 percent in India. The White House said that tariffs are effective immediately, but some business experts consider them preliminary and are designed as a starting point for negotiating to reduce overseas tariffs.
The proposed tariffs threaten to combine pressure on Apple’s business. The company is already negotiating with 20 % of tariffs on products imported from China, where Apple earns about 90 percent of the iPhone that sells worldwide. Mr. Trump said that the rate would reach 34 percent according to his new tariff plan.
Apple spokesman refused to express himself.
While Apple is the most important technology company that felt tariff stings, most other technological companies will see an impact – directly or indirectly. For example, Google and Microsoft are not so dependent on international suppliers, but have remarkable consumer electronics businesses. And tariffs could increase the cost of building massive new data centers that companies plan to build new artificial intelligence technologies.
The new fees are part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to remodel the world trade with tariffs in every country that imposes fees for American exports. American business officials estimate that India has a tariff rate of 13.5 percent For American goods, with 39 % tariff on agricultural products. Vietnam has a customs rate of 8.1 percent on US goods, with 17.1 percent tariff on agricultural products.
But during a press conference in the White House, Mr. Trump said that a combination of tariffs, currency handling and business barriers had a much more significant impact.
The cost of “reciprocal tariffs”, as Mr. Trump tells them, could bring Apple’s business to jam. IPhones, iPads and Apple watch the company sell, bringing three -quarters of annual income of nearly $ 400 billion. When Mr. Trump says that he will not allow the products to be exempt from tariffs, Apple will have to pay these fees that will reduce its profit, or indirectly these added customer costs increase prices.
According to Morgan Stanley, Apple’s annual costs will raise $ 8.5 billion, without relief from Trump’s administration, no relief from Trump administration, without relief from Trump Administration, without relief from Trump administration, without relief from Trump administration, without relief from Trump Administration, without relief from Trump Administration. This would reduce the company’s profit by $ 0.52 per share or about $ 7.85 billion next year. That would be about 7 % of the intervention of profits next year.
Apple shares dropped by 5.7 percent in trading with spare parts after Mr. Trump’s notes.
“Apple will take these new tariff numbers and introduce them to models that they have built and know how big they have,” said Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, instrumental founder, Bay Area, which uses artificial intelligence to improve production. She used to work in Apple.
After Mr. Trump joined the office, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, went to the White House and promised that Apple would invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. In February, Apple continued this promise by committing to investing $ 500 billion in the country, and a large part of the money was already part of its spending plans.
During the previous Trump administration, Mr. Cook’s work to build a relationship with Mr. Trump helped Apple to avoid tariffs on most of her products. US business officials in the previous Trump administration did not indicate tariffs on the iPhone and removed the tariffs from Apple Watch.
In 2019, Mr. Trump traveled after the Apple race in Texas, which produced desktops. Mr. Cook stood next to Mr. Trump when the president gained recognition for a plant that has been producing computers since 2013.
Since then, Apple has not moved the production of a single main product into the United States. Instead, she started to diversify outside China.
In 2017, when Mr. Trump began in the office, Apple began to set up mounting lines for the iPhone in India. It took five years to train workers and build an infrastructure to create their latest iPhones in the country. It is in the process of increasing production, with the hope that the Earth’s factories produce about 25 percent of 200 million iPhones that are sold annually.
The company also began to move AirPods, iPad and MacBooks to Vietnam. The country has become a destination for Apple and other after closing the COVID-19 factories in China in 2020, and Vietnamese factories were more than 10 percent of the 200 best suppliers that the company had in 2023.
Vietnam was an attractive place because of its proximity to China. India was tempting because Apple wanted to increase the sale of iPhone in the country, the second largest smartphone market in the world.
But Apple has fought American production in the past. The Texas race, which caused Mac, had problems when some workers left work after their shift, but before their compensation arrived, the company forced the company to close the assembly line. He also tried to find suppliers who could make components he needed as his own screw.
Mr. Cook said that the United States did not have enough qualified manufacturing staff to compete with China. To a Conference at the end of 2017He said China was one of the few places where Apple could reliably find people who are able to operate the most modern machines that produce its products.
“In the US, you might have a meeting of tool engineers and I’m not sure if we could fill the room,” Cook said. “In China you could fill in several football fields.”
