(Credit: Angela Moscaritolo/PCMag)
UPDATE 4/10: Apple has flown 600 tons of products from India to the US since March, Reuters reports. Five cargo planes, each containing 100 tons of products, flew out last month, and the sixth flew out this week just as Trump's baseline 10% tariff took effect on April 5. The weight of an iPhone 14 box, including the charging cable, is 350 grams. Based on that number, 600 tons would translate to approximately 1.5 million iPhone boxes, the report adds.
UPDATE 4/9: With price hikes and product delays piling up, President Trump halts "reciprocal tariffs" for most countries for 90 days, though most countries still face a 10% tariff. For China, tariffs are ballooning from an already-eye-popping 104% to 125%. This comes after Trump argued that Apple should move iPhone production to the US, which many view as a pipe dream.
Original Story:
Apple flew five cargo planes of iPhones and other products from India and China to the US in late March to avoid paying President Trump’s baseline 10% tariff that took effect on April 5, The Times of India reports.
The emergency shipments came in over three days in the last week of March, meaning Apple's US warehouses now have a few-months supply. “The reserves that arrived at lower duty will temporarily insulate the company from the higher prices that it will need to pay for new shipments under the revised tax rates,” a source tells the Times.
The move could help Apple avoid an immediate price hike. A vast majority of its products are manufactured in China, Vietnam, and India, and starting April 9, goods coming in from these countries would be tariffed at 54%, 46%, and 26%, respectively. (China's reciprocal tariffs are at 34%, but it previously got hit with 20% tariffs so 54% total.)
According to Rosenblatt Securities, iPhone costs could reach as much as $2,300. The company's most expensive smartphone, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, currently maxes out at $1,599.
Nintendo also reportedly shipped products last month to avoid the new tariffs. According to the Financial Times, more than half of Nintendo’s US hardware comes from Vietnam and Cambodia, and the video game company shipped over 383,000 units of the Switch 2 across five days of January to “get ahead of the risk of tariffs.”
Still, after President Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs, Nintendo delayed preorders for Switch 2, which were set to begin on April 9.