White House says Trump has no plans to remove 25% tariff on iPhones

Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has enacted a series of abrupt tariff changes, seemingly raising and reducing tariffs on a whim. The end result has wreaked havoc on the stock market while raising a number of unanswered questions about the impact tariffs will have on global trade. Things reached a nearly comical level of absurdity earlier this year when Trump imposed a whopping 145% tariff on Chinese goods before dropping it down to 30% a few weeks later. Apple, meanwhile, finds itself and the iPhone beholden to Trump’s unpredictable tariffs.

Apple, for a while, thought it might be able to escape the tariffs in China by relocating a significant portion of its production to India. Trump, however, recently said that’s not good enough. Rather, Trump wants to coerce Apple into manufacturing the iPhone in the United States and has plans to implement a 25% tariff.

Taking to social media last week, Trump wrote the following:

I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones 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 US Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Predictably, shares of Apple dropped significantly amid investor concerns that the company would be forced to raise iPhone prices, which would have a serious impact on iPhone sales. It is worth noting, though, that Apple might find it more feasible to just take the tariff hit, keep iPhone prices the same, and rely on its massive pile of cash to account for the tariff.

White House says it doesn’t want to harm Apple

And amidst all of these debates, the White House is arguing that people are making a big deal out of nothing. During an interview with CNBC, National Economic Council Director Keven Hasset downplayed what he termed a “tiny little tariff” on tech firms like Apple.

“The bottom line is, what we’re trying to do, is onshore as much as we can in the US and make it so the US is not hyper-dependent on imports from China,” Hassett said. “And I think one of the things we’re seeing is that people are moving way faster than you might expect.”

Hasset emphasized that the goal is to refocus manufacturing in the United States as much as possible “to make sure the US economy is secure and not prone to Chinese extortion.”