Donald Trump said Friday that 25% of customs tasks would apply to all the companies that sell on the smartphones of the United States gathered abroad, a few hours after threatening Apple.
“Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair,” he said. Donald Trump seemed to refer to a legal provision that allows the United States government to impose customs tariffs after an exam, in case interested imports constitute a threat to the national security of the United States. The Trump administration on semiconductors and its derived products launched such a survey in early April.
Relocation in India
The earliest Friday, the US president attacked Apple directly, not to mention another society, which suggests that only Apple’s firm was attacked. “I (I hope) that the iPhone sold in the United States is manufactured and built in the United States, and not in India or elsewhere,” said the US president on his social platform of truth. “If this is not the case, Apple will have to pay customs tasks of at least 25% in the United States,” he warned. According to the Political Information Site, Tim Cook went to the White House on Tuesday.
Apple has gathered for a long time the vast majority of its iPhone in China, in the factories operated by its two main subcontractors, the Taiwanese Foxconn and Pequeatron. Concerned about his dependence on China, in the context of the increase in tensions between the first two world economies, Apple’s firm gradually moved part of its production in India already in 2018, under the first mandate of Donald Trump. Since last year, the Cupertino Group (California) has accelerated the movement for the iPhone.
During the presentation of Apple’s latest results in early May, Tim Cook said he hoped that “most of the iPhone sold in the United States” during the current quarter comes from India. This measure made possible to avoid customs tasks of 145% applied by the United States to China products, traditionally the heart of the manufacture of these smartphones. Since then, the two countries have agreed a 90 -day truce in their customs surcharges, the time to negotiate an agreement, and Washington brought prices imposed on products imported from China by 145% to 30%.
Tata Electronics, a subsidiary of the Tata Industrial conglomerate, began this week to gather the iPhone 16, the last of the famous smartphone family, in Hosur, in southern India. At the same time, Foxconn is preparing the next opening of a new site in Devanahalli, also in the south of the country, which should use some 30,000 people, according to the Daily Times of India.
“It’s not realistic”
“It is possible to implement the final assembly in the United States,” said Bank of America analysts in a note, “but doing it for the entire supply chain would be a much heavier project, which would probably take years, if it is feasible.” They believe that a relocation could increase the price of the iPhone in the United States by 25%. Wedbush Securities analysts see the device sold around $ 3,500, compared to $ 799 for the iPhone 16.
Apple’s great rival, Samsung, is in a similar situation, its smartphones are manufactured, for the most part, in Vietnam, China and India. The two brands weigh around 80% of telephone sales in the United States. Little players in this market that are Google, Xiaomi or Motorola also produce most of these devices abroad.
Donald Trump “requests accounts from companies in the name of their definition of general interest,” observes Fazili Samera, from the Reflection Center of the Roosevelt Institute, “which is very different from the way in which Republicans generally deal with the private sector.”
Source: BFM TV
