President Trump threatened to revive his global trade wars Friday morning, saying he would apply a steep tariff to European exports starting in just over a week and warning Apple that iPhones manufactured outside of the United States would face a 25 percent tariff.
The president wrote on Truth Social Friday morning that discussions with the European Union “are going nowhere” and that he is recommending a 50 percent tariff on European imports as of June 1.
“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Mr. Trump wrote. He claimed the bloc’s trade barriers, taxes, corporate penalties and other policies had contributed to a trade imbalance with the United States that was “totally unacceptable.”
In an earlier social media post, the president also targeted Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, writing that iPhones sold in the United States should be “manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.”
If they are not, Mr. Trump said the ubiquitous smartphones would face a 25 percent tariff.
The posts appeared to rattle financial markets, with stock futures pointed sharply lower in premarket trading.
The posts are likely to add a fresh dose of chaos to trade relationships that had calmed somewhat in recent weeks, as the president focused his attention on a trip to the Middle East and a tax bill on Capitol Hill. Mr. Trump announced tranche after tranche of tariffs in his first 100 days, rocking stock markets and companies that depend on trade, only to pause some of the taxes last month to try to negotiate trade deals with other governments.
The Trump administration has been holding trade talks with over a dozen governments, including the E.U., to try to reach some kind of trade agreement before global tariffs are set to snap back into effect in early July. But some foreign officials say the Trump administration has not made their demands clear and that they are hesitant to make big concessions when Mr. Trump could slap tariffs on them again at any time.
In April, Mr. Trump also agreed to exclude electronics, including iPhones, from the tariffs he had imposed on China. The step could have saved companies like Apple billions of dollars in tariff costs. But the president’s comments Friday morning suggested he might be rethinking that decision.
Apple’s ability to manufacture iPhones, iPads and other devices in the United States faces huge challenges, including access to a labor force skilled in the precise manufacturing process the company uses to build its devices. Some analysts have estimated moving manufacturing to the United States could more than double the consumer price of an iPhone.
In China, Apple and its component suppliers are all clustered together around assembly plants longer than football fields. Thousands of engineers and other employees working for Foxconn and other firms live nearby, often in dormitories. It is an interlinked logistical infrastructure that has been built up over years and would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in the United States.
“In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” Mr. Cook said in 2017. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It’s that vocational expertise that is very deep.”
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London.
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