Donald Trump’s threat to unleash new tariffs on Apple has been expanded to Samsung and other competitors, because slugging only one mobile tech company “wouldn’t be fair.”
Hours after the president threatened a 25 percent tariff on Apple unless it moved iPhone production to the US, Trump threatened even more expansive tariffs, which he said could begin within weeks.
Asked if he had the power to tariff one single company, Trump replied: “It would be more. It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”
“That’ll start on, I guess, the end of June,” he added, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after signing executive orders to bolster the nuclear energy industry.
“When they build their plant here, there will be no tariffs.”
Stockmarkets tumbled, manufacturers warned of price hikes, and some Republicans got jittery on Friday after Trump reignited his trade wars, in which he also took aim at the European Union.
Insisting that talks “are going nowhere,” he threatened a 50 per cent tariff on the EU from June 1, days after the bloc of 27 countries had sent the White House a revised trade proposal that sought to strike a mutually beneficial deal with the U.S.
The EU pitch reportedly included proposals on international labor rights, economic security and suggested gradually reducing tariffs to zero on both sides for certain industrial goods and non-sensitive agricultural products.
But in a blistering post on Friday morning, Trump insisted that “the European Union has been very difficult to deal with.”
“The president believes that the EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other trading partners,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained on Fox News.
“I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU.”
The EU said it would not respond until after a scheduled meeting with Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer.
But Trump’s latest threats nonetheless sent global markets into a tailspin, with Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average sliding 1.5 per cent and Nasdaq futures tumbling 1.7 per cent before the opening bell. Oil prices fell and Treasury yields also sank.
Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson told Reuters that a 50 percent tariff would limit the ability of the company to sell its Belgium-made EX30 electric vehicle across the Atlantic, and that customers would end up having to pay more.
Federal Reserve official Austan Goolsbee said Trump’s latest threats could complicate the economy and were likely to put off changes to interest rates.
“Everything’s always on the table, but I feel like the bar for me is a little higher for action in any direction while we’re waiting to get some clarity,” Goolsbee, the president of the Chicago Federal Reserve, said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
And Republican Congressman French Hill, who heads the House Financial Services committee, also expressed some unease with the latest trade whiplash.
“My advice to (Trade Secretary) Howard Lutnick, and Scott Bessent and Donald Trump is: set out the expectations for voters,” he told CNBC.
“What could be short term successes that bring certainty, open up markets for America, have reciprocity trade, but recognize that it’s going to take a long time to return certain production activities to the US.”
Trump’s latest tariff threat comes months after he promised to “liberate America” by removing perceived trade disadvantages and unfair practices that negatively impact American businesses, farmers, and workers.
For instance, the president has repeatedly complained about the EU’s car exports, particularly from Germany to the US, with fewer vehicles being shipped the other way.
Trump imposed a 90-day pause on his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 9, hoping countries would negotiate with the US on a better tariff rate, while still leaving a 10 per cent rate on all countries but China.
But he has only secured a deal with the UK and a preliminary deal with China in that time, although negotiations are ongoing.
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