[LOS ANGELES] Apple is finding itself squarely in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, even after a years-long effort to insulate the iPhone maker from trade wars and supply chain disruptions.
A long list of levies unveiled by the White House are poised to hit the company especially hard, triggering an after-hours stock rout on Wednesday (Apr 2). The new reciprocal tariffs – a tax on imported goods in response to existing tariffs – will reach 34 per cent for China. That would bring the total rate on Chinese goods to 54 per cent, threatening to roil an Apple supply chain that still has the Asian country at its heart.
But tariffs also cover Apple’s other manufacturing centres, undercutting efforts to shift away from China. Though the company still produces the majority of its US-sold devices in Chinese factories, Apple now makes its wares across a swath of nations.
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India, where Apple is increasingly building iPhones and AirPods, is getting a 26 per cent reciprocal tariff.
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Vietnam, where the company now makes some AirPods, iPads, Apple Watches and Macs, will be hit with a 46 per cent levy.
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Malaysia, where Apple is increasingly making Mac computers, will have a 24 per cent tariff.
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Thailand, where the company also makes some Macs, will get a 36 per cent levy.
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Ireland, within the European Union, gets a 20 per cent tariff. Apple produces some iMacs there.
The announcement jolted investors, who have grown increasingly concerned that tariffs will hurt Apple’s bottom line. The shares fell as much as 7.9 per cent in extended trading. The stock was already down 11 per cent this year through the close, part of a broader tech retreat.
The White House said the new tariffs kick in on Apr 9. An Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Apple could be affected further given the need to source components from several other countries and regions that are also being hit by tariffs.
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The new levies will likely squeeze margins, “given we do not expect the company to hike prices to offset the effects”, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard said in a note. If Apple does raise prices, it will do so at a time of shaky consumer sentiment, they said.
During the first Trump administration, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook persuaded the president to exclude the iPhone and some other products from tariffs. He argued that the levies would hurt an American company and benefit South Korea-based Samsung Electronics.
Earlier this year, Apple sought to get back on Trump’s good side by promising that it would invest US$500 billion in the US over the next four years, a slight acceleration of the rate under president Joe Biden when not accounting for inflation. As part of that push, the company said it would produce some artificial intelligence-related servers in Texas. It also recently started producing a small number of chips at a facility in Arizona.
Today, Apple conducts little to no mass production in the US. It advertises a single model – the Mac Pro, which starts at US$6,999 – as being built in Texas. But that machine sells in limited quantities, and many of its parts are imported from China and elsewhere. BLOOMBERG
