Trump to Apple: Move from China, make iPhones at home

Published time: 5 Jan, 2019 09:55

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Apple store in Shanghai, China © AFP / Johannes Eiselle

President Donald Trump has told Apple to make its products in the US instead of China. It comes shortly after the Silicon Valley giant’s lowered revenue forecast crashed the market, but Trump says he’s not concerned about it.

“Apple makes its product in China. I told [Apple CEO] Tim Cook, who’s a friend of mine, who I like a lot, ‘Make your product in the United States,’” Trump told reporters near the White House on Friday. He added that the tech giant should “build those big, beautiful plants” in America, as China is currently its “biggest beneficiary,” hosting most of the production.

“I want Apple to make their iPhones and all the great things they make in the United States and that will take place,” the US leader concluded.

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However, the iPhone maker earlier insisted that some components for its devices are actually made in the US, but people only focus on where the final product is assembled. Cook told media in March that many companies produce components in a variety of countries, stressing that it is “a misunderstanding… that they just see where the final product is assembled and say, oh, that is not done in the US.”

On Thursday, the US telecom giant and once trillion-dollar company lost billions dollars of its value and crashed the US market after it slashed its revenue forecast earlier this week. The announcement does not bother Trump, however. He told reporters that the company is “going to be fine” and added that it went “up hundreds of percent” since he took office. Apple stock has indeed risen since January 2017, but its growth was around 20 percent.

As talks about a trade deal between US and Chinese delegations loom, the American leadership is confident that its position is stronger. However, the tit-for-tat tariff war put pressure on many US companies and big industrial stocks have gone down, Boom Bust’s Bart Chilton – a former commissioner at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – explained to RT America.

“The Chinese are hitting us where it hurts and that’s in our pocketbooks,” he told host Rick Sanchez.

Despite Apple saying that sales in China went down partly because of the trade war, the company itself made mistakes on the Chinese market and lots of lost revenue is actually Apple’s fault, the analyst believes.

“An average person there [in China] makes $10,000 a year, so you’re selling them a $1,200, $1,500 iPhone... when they could get a Huawei phone, that’s Chinese manufacturing, for 500 bucks with all the same bells and whistles that an iPhone can have, what do you expect?”