Five five flights full of iPhone from India

At the end of 2019 Apple made a decision regarding the manufacture of the Mac Pro: it would stay in Texas To dodge the commercial war with China. Five and a half years later Apple – like the rest of the world – meets the dilemma of what to do before a global commercial war. In Cupertino in fact they have already taken some surprise measures.

IPhone full aircraft. As they point out In The Times of IndiaApple wanted to advance to the application of these tariffs. At the end of March he fought five commercial airplanes in India and filled them with iPhone to send them to the United States. Everything to avoid those new reciprocal tariffs taxes by Donald Trump and that were activated on April 5.

Inventory to fall (a little) the storm. The measure allows Apple to have its iPhone inventory full in its United States stores. In this way they can protect Apple from the impact of tariffs for at least a time. Sources close to the company indicated that Apple has also transferred part of its China inventory to the United States, and that despite the fact that this is a period in which sales slow down in the United States. Or they decelerated, in the past.

Buy, foolish. The threat of price increases on iPhone has caused some urgency among Apple products buyers. As they reveal In BloombergDuring the last weekend Apple’s physical stores lived a flood of purchases. According to the employees of the firm, the influx of visitors and the rhythm sale was more typical of intense Christmas days than of a “quiet” weekend of early April.

Diversify at all. The company led by Tim Cook has been diversifying its manufacturing strategy to avoid excessive dependence on China. It has moved part of its production to countries like Vienam or India, but those plans now They have been torpedoated For Trump’s tariffs, which especially affect To the countries of the Asian region.

Importing from India is bad, but doing so from China is much worse. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are 26% for India, but they are (for the moment) of 54% for China. Put to choose from where to import the iPhone that are manufactured outside the US, it is much cheaper to do it from India, and the country thus becomes the “less bad” solution to mitigate the impact of tariffs.

At the moment there are no price increases. It is soon to know how Apple will react to tariffs, but most likely she, like all, Have to raise prices. Chopping those planes full of iPhone gives some margin of maneuver and time because raising prices is probably a measure that they make at the same time globally. If they can delay something the measure in the US, that is theoretically good news for potential buyers in the rest of the world.

Image | Patrick Campanale

In Xataka | Nike is caught in a perfect storm: the new US tariffs are his last lunge