Trump's trade policies could make the price of an iPhone skyrocket

iPhone could get even more expensive because of Donald Trump's trading policies.

(Image credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

published 16 November 2016

Donald Trump has vowed to get "Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries," but that could mean your iPhone is about to get a whole lot more expensive, The Washington Post reports.

Trump has long promised to put an end to the proliferation of Chinese-manufactured products in the U.S., and to do so he has floated instating a tax as high as 45 percent on Chinese goods. "If [Trump] institutes a 35-percent penal tariff on every export from China, then most of what you buy at Walmart is 35 percent more expensive," Roger Entner of Recon Analytics explained. While some analysts say the tariff wouldn't necessarily trigger a parallel jump in prices, it would still make manufacturing iPhones significantly more expensive for Apple — and, in turn, for you to buy. A mere 15 percent tax could push iPhones up $50 in cost.

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To truly bring Apple's manufacturing back to the United States — meaning not just the final assembly of the phones and computers but the production of components by suppliers — would take tens of billions of dollars in new factory construction costs alone, Entner said.That doesn't consider the additional investments in education the United States would need to make to staff those factories [...] Considering the deficit in skilled U.S. workers, any plan to move Apple's manufacturing back to the United States probably would require hiring more foreign workers until enough Americans could be trained to take those jobs.All of this could be occurring against the backdrop of a trade-induced recession. As many as 4 million U.S. jobs would be lost as a result of Trump's trade war, and 3 million jobs would never be created, according to Moody's Analytics. [The Washington Post]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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