It’s the president’s latest salvo directly targeting a U.S. company after he hit out at Walmart and Mattel.
Apple shares fell 3% Friday after President Donald Trump threatened the tech giant with a 25% tariff if it does not start producing iPhones in the U.S. — his latest salvo directly targeting a U.S. company over how it conducts its business.
In a post on his Truth Social platform Friday morning, Trump wrote he had “long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.”
“If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said.
Apple is now down approximately 20% year to date as Trump’s threats run up against concerns about the tech giant keeping pace with the AI race.
In remarks to the press early Friday afternoon, Trump clarified that any tariff imposed on Apple would also apply to devices imported by companies like Samsung “and any other company that makes that product.”
“Otherwise it would not be fair,” Trump said, adding that such a tariff could be implemented by the end of June.
“When they build their plant here, there’s no tariff,” Trump continued. He said he believed he’d come to an “understanding” with Cook that he wouldn’t be keeping iPhone production overseas. The tariff, Trump indicated, was in response to Apple continuing to do so.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment to CNBC. Less than 24 hours earlier, the Financial Times reported Apple was finalizing plans for a $1.5 billion iPhone component production center in India.
Trump also posted threats of a blanket-50% duty on the European Union, saying trade negotiations with the region were “going nowhere.”
That post sent broader markets into deeper negative territory. The S&P 500 ended the day down 0.67% for its first significant weekly loss in a month.
After a seeming lull that allowed U.S. stocks to make up or erase much of the losses they’d suffered since his shock “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs announcement in April, Trump returned Friday to attempting to bend markets to his will.
Late in the afternoon, he announced his blessing of a deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel. He ostensibly opposed a tie-up during the campaign. Shares of the U.S. Steel soared 20% on the news
In a statement, United Steelworkers International President David McCall said. “We cannot speculate about the impact of today’s announcement without more information.”
“Our concern remains that Nippon, a foreign corporation with a long and proven track record of violating our trade laws, will further erode domestic steelmaking capacity and jeopardize thousands of good, union jobs.”
Presidents typically avoid giving the appearance of dictating individual companies’ strategies, but Trump has broken with that norm. Instead, he has begun ramping up direct attacks against U.S. companies whose responses to his tariffs he dislikes, including Amazon, Mattel and Walmart.
His targeting of Apple may represent a more serious threat. Trump had already signaled his displeasure with Apple CEO Tim Cook recently.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” he told members of the media last week. “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.”
In an appearance on Fox News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent elaborated on Trump’s missive, saying he was “trying to bring back precision manufacturing to the U.S.
“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.”
As the impact of Trump’s tariffs, which continue to include a 10% blanket levy and effective tariffs of some 40% on Chinese goods, has come sharper into view for U.S. firms, Trump has increasingly taken aim at their responses.
Last week, the president slammed Walmart for saying it was likely to raise prices on shoppers within weeks, demanding that the retail giant “EAT THE TARIFFS.”
The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board derided that move as a potentially “Marxist” effort to tell a company how to run its business, “along with a vague, implicit threat of retribution.” It said Trump was going “full Kamala Harris,” referring to his 2024 campaign rival’s anti-price-gouging plan, and added, “How would Mr. Trump react if Congress told him how much his family could charge for a Mar-a-Lago fee?”
Walmart subsequently issued a statement saying it would work to keep prices “as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins.” In the days that followed, several other major consumer brands appeared to tiptoe around pricing matters. Target said Wednesday that charging customers more would be its “very last resort.”
Earlier this month, Trump threatened Barbie maker Mattel with a “100% tariff” on its toys if it did not move production to the U.S. Mattel told CNBC that it would still likely be forced to adjust prices in the U.S. and that it didn’t foresee being able to reshore its manufacturing.
And last month, administration officials called a report that Amazon would begin labeling tariffs costs at checkout a “hostile and political act,” with Trump personally calling founder Jeff Bezos to complain. Hours later, Amazon sought to downplay the scope of its plan — and then said it was off the table entirely.
As for Apple, at least half of its iPhones are made in China. In April, Reuters reported that Apple had begun making plans to shift all iPhone production to India by the end of 2026.
New iPhones are priced around $1,199. Wall Street analysts have offered up various estimates for what an American-made iPhone would cost, ranging from $1,500 to $3,500, depending on how much of its supply chain Apple is ultimately able to reshore.
In a note to clients Friday following Trump’s post, Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives, who first gave the $3,500 estimate in April, called the idea of U.S.-made phones a “fairy tale.” He said he believed Apple would continue to attempt to negotiate with the administration to come to a resolution.
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NBC News
