Apple’s data shows a deeper – not a weaker – dependence on China as Trump’s new tariffs loom
- Few American firms are as tightly bound to Asia’s largest economy as Apple
Tapping factories in Brazil and India has not lessened Apple’s dependence on China, the company’s supply chain data shows, raising the stakes for the iPhone maker as US President Donald Trump wages a trade war and promises more tariffs.
Apple faces levies of 15 per cent imposed by Trump’s administration on major products made in China such as smartwatches and wireless headphones on September 1, with a tariff on its biggest seller, the iPhone, to take effect on December 15.
Few American firms are as tightly bound to Asia’s largest economy as Apple. Contract factories owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and others employ hundreds of thousands of workers to assemble Apple devices. In recent years, Apple’s contract manufacturers have expanded into other countries.
India, for example, had no Apple contract manufacturer locations in 2015 but expanded to three assembly facilities by 2019, including a factory owned by Foxconn, which plans to make models from the iPhone X family of devices, Reuters reported last year.
Apple taps the India operations to avoid steep import duties on iPhones in one of the last fast-growing mobile phone markets on the planet, similar to Apple and Foxconn’s move to open a production facility in Brazil in 2011. But the factories outside China are smaller and, in the case of India and Brazil, Apple only uses them to meet domestic demand.