Or Apple manufactures the iPhone in the United States, or the Trump administration will impose an additional 25%tariff. The last weeks of May are starring New threats to technology companiessome that They will serve as little in the case of Apple. As much as a new tariff is imposed, the company is still more profitable to manufacture in India than in the United States.
It is not the only one under the spotlight. Trump has recently stated that “Samsung and any other that manufactures this product” (the smartphone) will face tariffs. The message is clear: if it is sold in the United States, you want to be manufactured in the United States.
Samsung, under the spotlight. In the general photography of best -selling mobile brands in the world, there is not much beyond Chinese brands. Samsung and Apple are the main protagonists, with a minority participation of giants such as Google or Motorola.
Trump has made it clear that all telephone manufacturer that manufactures out of the United States will have to face new tariffs. And there is not one that manufactures there.
Vietnam as refuge. The history of the Samsung supply chain is one in which China ceased to be present more than ten years ago. The company made a strategic bet for Vietnam, its investments in the country in 2024 exceeded 220 million dollars, and employs more than 100,000 people in which, for years, it was its main refuge against the commercial war between China and the United States.
The South Korean giant production chain is strategically diversified between countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, Brazil or Indonesia, having closed its last Chinese phone factories in 2019.
The possible impact. Samsung is in a situation similar to Apple’s. Currently, plants in Vietnam are more than 50% of their global production volume. This country has a minimum labor costof just three dollars an hour in electronics.
Moving the production chain to the United States is simply unassumable, due to labor costs, factor and R&D, degree of automation in Vietnamese production and lack of a pool of thousands of technicians willing to work in the shifts that make possible the current rhythm of Samsung in Vietnam.
A tariff hurts, but less than moving the production chain. A 25% tariff would destroy the current margins of Samsung and force both to absorb a certain part of them and to raise the price of the product in the United States.
It is still a better plan to allocate decades to rebuild from scratch an infrastructure and technical specialization in which they have been allocating millions of dollars for more than ten years.
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