President Donald Trump announced a possible tariffing of Apple by 25 percent for phones not made in the US in an attempt to get the company to manufacture iPhones in the US exclusively. These tariffs would begin by the end of June.
According to Trump, he notified Apple CEO Tim Cook of this possibility “long ago.”
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump told reporters on May 15. “I said to him, ‘My friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion. But now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, shares of Apple dropped 2.6 percent.
On Friday, Trump clarified the extent of companies to which the tariffs would apply, which is not exclusive to Apple.
“It would be more,” Trump said to reporters. “It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair. So anybody that makes that product, and that’ll start on, I guess, the end of June.”
The White House aims to bring back American manufacturing to the US, which is one of the goals of these tariffs. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent commented on the President’s efforts in this field of US economics:
“And I think that one of our greatest vulnerabilities are these … this external production, especially in semiconductors, and a large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure. What I found interesting in Saudi Arabia last week was that the president called out Tim Cook for not being there.”
