Apple Inc 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 announced by the White House are poised to hit the company especially hard, triggering an after-hours stock rout on Wednesday. The new reciprocal tariffs will reach 34% for China. That would bring the total rate on Chinese goods to 54%, threatening to upset 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 products across several nations.
India, where Apple is increasingly building iPhones and AirPods, is getting a 26% reciprocal tariff. Vietnam, where the company now makes some AirPods, iPads, Apple Watches and Macs, will be hit with a 46% levy.
Malaysia, where Apple is increasingly making Mac computers, will have a 24% tariff. Thailand, where the company also makes some Macs, will get a 36% levy.
Ireland, within the European Union, gets a 20% 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% in extended trading in New York on Wednesday. The stock was already down 11% this year through the close, part of a broader tech retreat.
The White House said the new tariffs will kick in on April 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.
The new levies will likely squeeze margins, “given we don’t expect the company to hike prices to offset the effects,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard write. 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 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 $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 AI-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 $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.
