Trump Eyes 100% Chips Tariff, However 0% for US Buyers Like Apple

The elevated pledge comes as Trump escalates a tariff push that’s set to boost prices for Apple all through its worldwide provide chains. 

Trump plans to whack India — a key manufacturing marketplace for Apple — with 50% tariffs, the primary half of which takes impact simply after midnight alongside a raft of different country-specific levies designed to scale back commerce imbalances. The opposite half, to penalize India for getting Russian vitality, will take impact later this month. 

The president has stated he might unveil separate levies on all merchandise containing semiconductor chips as quickly as subsequent week.

Prepare dinner, who attended the president’s inauguration and donated to his inaugural committee, has pushed for tariff exemptions for his firm’s iPhones. Most iPhones offered within the US come from India, whereas the majority of different merchandise, together with Apple Watches, iPads and MacBooks, are manufactured in Vietnam, which was hit with a 20% tariff.

Whereas particulars of these tariffs — and the way companies would qualify for exemptions — have but to be launched, Trump singled out Prepare dinner’s Apple for instance of easy methods to keep away from the elevated levies. 

Prepare dinner’s funding echoes dozens of pledges from corporations since Trump received the 2024 presidential election, with CEOs flying to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after which to the White Home as soon as he was sworn in, to courtroom the brand new administration and announce lots of of billions of {dollars} value of recent offers. 

Many of those investments had been already within the works previous to the November election, or had been on par with earlier funding traits, Bloomberg beforehand reported. Economists have additionally questioned whether or not the entire pledged spending, and related job alternatives, will come to fruition. 

Apple’s promised investments, whereas substantial, fall in need of the complete shift to US-based manufacturing that Trump and high White Home officers have envisioned and inspired. Earlier this 12 months, the president threatened to impose a tariff of no less than 25% on Apple if it didn’t transfer manufacturing of the iPhone to the US, a day after he met with Prepare dinner on the White Home. 

Prepare dinner instructed the president that ultimate iPhone meeting “can be elsewhere for some time,” although highlighted that a number of parts are being made within the US. 

Trump, seemingly glad, praised the Apple chief’s plans. 

“Look, he’s not making this sort of an funding anyplace on the planet, not even shut,” Trump stated of Prepare dinner. “He’s coming again. I imply, Apple’s coming again to America.”