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One of the key stated aims of the Trump administration’s tariffs is to bring back production of all kinds of goods to the USA. But how much would they cost if that actually happened? One analyst estimates iPhone prices would spike to $3,500. What’s more, it would take fully three years to build up the supply chains to move just 10% of iPhone production to the US.
Dan Ives, global head of technology research at financial services firm Wedbush Securities, told CNN that iPhone prices would more than triple if production was wholly moved to the US.
“It’s the most complex supply chain in the world,” Ives said of iPhone production. “You build that in the US, with a with a fab in West Virginia and New Jersey, they’ll be $3,500 iPhones,” he said.
“It would cost Apple $30 billion and three years to move just 10% of the supply chain to the US,” he continued. In the discussion, CNN also pointed out that Apple uses literally hundreds of manufacturing facilities across China to make iPhones. The impact of attempting to repatriate all of that infrastructure to the USA hardly bares thinking about in terms of time and money.
Anywho, the implications of all this for the PC are hardly good. If Ives thinks the supply chain for an iPhone is the most complex in the world, that of a, say, a gaming laptop, can’t be too far behind.
The same kind of price spike applied to a $1,500 gaming laptop, perhaps something like this HP Omen 17 with an RTX 4070, would result in a machine costing well in excess of $5,000.
Of course, if you apply that 3x-plus metric to the latest $4,500 Razer Blade 16 with its fancy new Nvidia RTX 50-series graphics, you’d be looking at something close to $15,000. For a laptop. No doubt moving the production of every single laptop part to the US would also be very time consuming.
Of course, the iPhone cost escalation is a single analyst’s estimation. But it does provide some insight into the practical realities of actually moving production of the most advanced consumer goods from one country to another.
Moreover, if these figure are remotely accurate, it seems fairly clear that even with 100% tariffs, or perhaps even higher, it would still be cheaper to make iPhones, and arguably devices like gaming laptops, outside of the US.
How this all plays out is anyone’s guess. But, right now, neither imported nor US-made PC hardware seems like it’s going to get cheaper any time soon.
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Kurt Indovina
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