UPDATED 22:05 EDT / APRIL 08 2025

POLICY

Tariffs on China to increase to 104% as White House talks about building iPhones in the US

Tariffs on Chinese products are set to rise to at least 104% today after President Trump warned the U.S. would strike back, following China retaliating with its own tariff increase.

China vowed to “fight to the end,” introducing a retaliatory tariff package after which Trump said he’d tack 50% more onto the 54%. “It was a mistake for China to retaliate,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “The president, when America is punched, he punches back harder. That’s why there will be 104% tariffs going into effect on China tonight at midnight, but the president believes that Xi and China want to make a deal.”

Leavitt claims China will reach out and if so, she believes Trump will be “gracious.” Trump echoed these sentiments on his Truth Social page, writing, “China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started.” He added, “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”

Within all the tariff turmoil, Trump and the White House have openly discussed bringing iPhone manufacturing to the U.S. The creation of the devices is a global business, but much of the manufacturing takes place in China.

“There’s an array of diverse jobs, more traditional manufacturing jobs… but also jobs in advanced technologies,” said Leavitt. “The president is looking at all of those. He wants them to come back home.” She also claimed that Apple’s $500 billion U.S. investment plan points to the company’s willingness to move operations to the U.S.

That’s an oversimplification at best. As Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told Fortune magazine in 2017, China isn’t just a low-cost option where armies of unskilled workers robotically assemble iPhones. He said it’s the “quantity of skill in one location” that makes China the ideal place to make Apple’s flagship product.

“It is like the products we do require really advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state-of-the-art, and the tooling skill is very deep here,” he added. “You know in, in the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room — in China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

At the moment, Apple’s shares are suffering. The company lost 20% of its value during the tariff wrangle, wiping out about $640 billion in market cap as other tech firms also feel the sting of tariff chaos.

Photo: Unsplash

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