At the end of March, Apple secretly chartered six cargo flights to transport the 600-ton iPhone’ from ’ in India to ABD’, Reuters’ reported, citing unnamed sources.
Each of the cargo planes reportedly has a capacity of 100 tons. The report said the move was aimed at US President Donald Trump ’'s intention to pass future tariffs on “.
According to the calculation of the news source, a total of 1.5 million iPhones were carried on airplanes.
Apple also launched a negotiation at Chennai airport called ‘green corridor’ to speed up customs clearance and reduce the 30-hour process to six hours. This is an application that Apple’ regularly follows in China’, where it produces a large number of its products.
Apple is increasing its stockpiles in the U.S. ’ to reduce the impact of tariffs on imports from India and China’.
Apple plans to ship more iPhones from India ’ to the US ’ to offset the high cost of Chinese tariffs, the Wall Street Journal’ reported on Monday. Last year, the company exported more than $17 billion (€15 billion) of iPhones from the South Asian country. IndiaProduction in ’ could potentially cover half of the U.S. iPhone market.
Meanwhile, China, the company's traditional manufacturing hub, is caught in the middle of a trade war with the United States. The world's second-largest economy announced on Friday that the Trump administration has imposed on imports from China ’. %Customs duties on U.S. goods in response to 145 customs duties as of April 12 %the 84 ’ 5’e announced the arrangement.
India, meanwhile, has announced a 90-day halt to the so-called ‘ reciprocal tariffs on U.S. ’ye exports before the so-called ’ reciprocal tariffs go into effect this week. %He was faced with a customs duty of 26’. Currently IndiaGoods imported from ’ are at U.S. customs are subject to customs duty.
A $3,000 iPhone?
As Apple’'s supply chain is largely based in China, fears are growing that prices for iPhone’s manufactured in most Asian countries, as well as other everyday tech products such as laptops and headphones, will rise significantly.
Apple has been producing most of its iPhone’s since the first model was released in China ’ 18 years ago; both parties to each other's imports %Since it imposes more than 125’ taxes, the United States is a country where ’ is about to freeze trade.
According to experts, it could take several years and billions of dollars for the tech giant to change decades of practices and move its supply chain outside of China’.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told “ that the idea of producing iPhones in ’ is not the starting spot; This is a widely accepted view in the investment community. If production were to shift to the U.S. ’, China or India estimated that the current $1,000 price tag for an iPhone manufactured in ’ would rise above $3,000 (€2,647). And he believes that moving production domestically probably won't be done until 2028 at the earliest. As trade policies develop rapidly, it is unclear whether the tech giant will be willing to make this investment.
Apple has yet to publicly discuss Trump’'s response to tariffs on China’, but the issue could be raised on May 1, when Apple CEO Tim Cook’ will answer analysts' questions during a quarterly conference call to discuss the company's financial results and strategy.
Apple’'s stock price since Trump’ raised tariffs on April 2 ’ %It dropped 15 percent and reduced the company's market value by $500 billion (€442 billion).
Euronews contacted Apple’'s press team to receive further comments on the shipment of cargo from ’, India to USA’.
