Maybe King (er, President) Trump was just kidding. After threatening Apple with a 25% tariff if the company didn’t manufacture all its iPhones in the U.S., the White House now insists that the folks won’t have to pay more for iPhones.
As noted by 9to5Mac, in repeating Trump’s station, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett “has treated tariff complaints as a joke — and also insisted that Apple will not raise prices.”
“I’m kind of like the person in an airplane that’s getting walloped over the head by everybody,” he said in an interview with CNBC, “where everybody says, ‘Oh, like, we’re never going to be able to do anything if we have this tariff, it’s going to be a disaster if we have this tariff.'”
In a confusing interview, he said both that CEOs come in to complain like this, but then “tell me the opposite because they don’t want [their] bonds to be downgraded.”
“So the point is that everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now,” he continued, “to try to negotiate down the tariffs.”
Despite what anyone at the White House says, whether it’s a 25% tariff or forcing (assuming that were legally possible, which it’s not), iPhones prices would rise under either scenario. In fact, by some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as US$3,500.
“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply,” Hassett said.
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