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10% import tax hits Apple – but will it affect iPhone prices?

Just a few days ago, President Donald Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on over $300bn worth of goods imported from China. This will affect almost all of Apple’s major products, which still rely heavily on parts manufactured overseas, with Apple stocks down over 2% immediately following the news.

These tariffs go into affect on September 1, meaning we could see a big impact when Apple announces this year’s new iPhones later that month.

These taxes are in part intended to persuade American companies to manufacture more parts in the US, and Apple says it has plans to do just that. But in the short term, in could mean yet another round of price bumps for an already expensive lineup of devices.

That’s what we thought, anyway.

Since then, respected Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has posted a note to investors in which he says it’s unlikely this round of tariffs will affect Apple’s prices in the US.

Instead, he argues, Apple has been preparing for this possibility for a long time and has the resources to “absorb” the extra cost rather than passing it on to the consumer.

He also expects Apple to be able to meet most of its demand with home-grown parts within two years, meaning it will only need to take a hit on these tariffs in the short term.

If he’s right, that’s a sigh of a relief for US consumers – and a promising sign of things to come for anyone keen for Apple to build more products in its own backyard. Though, with Apple increasing its market share in China, there’s a high chance it will end up shipping many of those American-made products right back to its old supply chain!