Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, June 3, 2019.
Mason Trinca | Reuters
China has not targeted Apple at all in the ongoing trade dispute between Beijing and Washington, according to CEO Tim Cook.
“The Chinese have not targeted Apple at all, and, I don’t anticipate that happening, to be honest,” Cook said in an interview with CBS News Tuesday, where he also spoke on a number of other subjects including immigration, fake news and how much time consumers spend on their iPhones.
In an escalating tit-for-tat trade war between the world’s two largest economies, China on Saturday raised tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods — that included slapping higher duties on more than 5,000 American products by as high as 25%. Beijing’s move came in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s decision to hike duties on $200 billion of Chinese imports.
A 25% tariff on an iPhone could potentially raise the smartphone’s price by more than a hundred U.S. dollars — that would make those devices a lot more expensive in China in yuan terms.
Cook told CBS News that while such a scenario will certainly hurt sales, he doesn’t “anticipate it happening.”
“I know people think the iPhone is made in China. The iPhone is assembled in China. The truth is, the iPhone is made everywhere,” he told CBS News. “And so a tariff on the iPhone would hurt all of those countries, but the one that would be hurt the most is this one.”
Apple slashed prices for several of its major products in China, including iPhones, iPads, Macs and AirPods, earlier this year. The company had previously blamed a revenue shortfall on falling iPhone sales and demand in the Greater China region.
Read the extended CBS News interview transcript from Cook’s interview here.
