TMTPOST -- Apple Inc. stock surged as much as 6.1% and finished around 5.1% on Thursday. Shares of logged their best day since May 12 as Apple vowed more investments in the United States amid ongoing global tariffs recently hitting India, one of the iPhone maker’s main manufacturing hubs.
Credit：Apple
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order imposing an additional 25% tariff on imports from India over Russian oil purchase. The order, effective on August 27, or 21 days after announcement of the order, will bring the combined tariffs imposed by the U.S. on Indian goods to 50 % by the end of this month. A major question following the order has been whether and to what extent Apple will be impacted.
The White House said Apple would remain largely unaffected by the new tariffs on India, CNBC reported. It cited White House officials that the way that Trump’s executive order was written is that the 50% tariffs effectively doubles the reciprocal tariffs that were set to be at 25%, so it means the same exemptions continue to remain. And those reciprocal tariffs, semiconductors and all derivative products will remain exempt from all of those tariffs,it added.
Therefore, the tariff rate increased to 50% will not impact any semiconductors, any derivative products coming in from India, according to the report. That means the increase in India tariff should not impact Apple based on the way this executive order was written.
Besides, from the title to content of the order told us the tariffs resulted from India’s buying Russian oil. India is explicitly named, but no other countries are mentioned in the order. For CNBC, this way suggested the Trump administration is trying to keep on its relationship with Beijing on a good path at least for now, because it is not targeting China, the largest buyer of Russian oil, and only hit India, the second largest buyer.
Apple CEO Tim Cook later Wednesday confirmed reported additional $100 billion investment in U.S. "I'm glad to be here with you today, and I'm very proud to say that today, we're committing an additional $100 billion to the United States," Cook told Trump in the Oval Office.
Cook said Apple has already signed new agreements with ten companies in U.S. to do more local manufacturing. The company is also committed to purchase of Amercian made, advanced rare earth magnets, Cook said, noting an agreement announced last month. That deal saw Apple’s new commitment of $500 million and MP Materials, the only fully integrated rare earth producer in the U.S.
Trump, speaking alongside Cook, said Apple will build a 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility in Houston, and invest billions of dollars to construct data centers across the country from North Carolina to Iowa to Oregon.
Apple in a statement said a new $100 billion commitment is an acceleration of its U.S. investment that now totals $600 billion over the next four years. The company announced the new American Manufacturing Program (AMP) , dedicated to bringing even more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the U.S.
Through AMP, Apple will increase its investment across America and incentivize global companies to manufacture even more critical components in the United States.The first AMP partners include Corning, Coherent, GlobalWafers America (GWA), Applied Materials, Texas Instruments (TI), Samsung, GlobalFoundries, Amkor, and Broadcom.
As part of the $600 billion commitment, Apple is committed to investment of $2.5 billion to produce all of the cover glass for iPhone and Apple Watch in Corning’s Harrodsburg, Kentucky, manufacturing facility. “This means that 100 percent of the cover glass on iPhone and Apple Watch units sold worldwide will be made in the U.S. for the first time,” said Apple in a statement.
Coring is creating the world’s largest and most advanced smartphone glass production line at the Harrodsburg facility, and now it dedicate the entire facility to produce Apple devices, which will help increase Corning’s manufacturing and engineering workforce in Kentucky by 50%. The two companies will also open a new Apple-Corning Innovation Center at the Harrodsburg plant. The center will play a key role in the development and engineering of advanced materials and next-generation manufacturing platforms for Apple’s future products.
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