Trump Threatens 50% Tariffs On European Goods, And 25% Penalties On Apple

In response to Trump’s tariffs on China, Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that most iPhones sold in the US during the current fiscal quarter would come from India, with iPads and other devices being imported from Vietnam. After Trump rolled out tariffs in April, bank analysts estimated that a $1,200 iPhone would, if made in America, jump in price anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500.

Stocks sold off after Trump’s postings, with the S&P 500 index down roughly 0.5% in Friday afternoon trading. The markets have developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to the US president’s statements, often slumping when he announces high tariffs and rallying when he retreats from those threats.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to provide some clarity on Trump’s postings in a Friday interview on the Fox News show America’s Newsroom.

Bessent said the EU has a “collective action problem” because its 27 member states are being represented by “this one group in Brussels,” such that the “underlying countries don’t even know what the EU is negotiating on their behalf.”

The Treasury secretary said he was not in a White House meeting this week that Cook attended, but he also spoke with the Apple CEO this week. Bessent said the goal was to have Apple bring more of its computer chip supply chain into the US.

The core of Trump’s argument against the EU is that America runs a “totally unacceptable” trade deficit with the 27 member states. Countries run trade deficits when they import more goods than they export.

From the vantage point of the EU’s executive commission, trade with the US is roughly in balance if both goods and services are included. As a global center for finance and technology, the US runs a trade surplus in services with Europe. That offsets some of the trade gap in goods and puts the imbalance at 48 billion euros ($54 billion).

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the EU’s executive commission has his country’s full support in working to “preserve our access to the American market.”

“I think such tariffs help no one, but would just lead to economic development in both markets suffering,” Wadephul said in Berlin. “So we are still counting on negotiations, and support the European Commission in defending Europe and the European market while at the same time working on persuasion in America.”

Trump aides have said the goal of his tariffs was to isolate China and strike new agreements with allies, but the president’s tariff threats undermine the logic of those claims. Not only could the EU face higher tariffs than China, but the bloc of member states might have been better off by establishing a broad front with China and other countries against Trump’s trade policy, said German economist Marcel Fratscher.

“The strategy of the EU Commission and Germany in the trade conflict with Trump is a total failure,” Fratscher, the head of the German Institute for Economic Research, said on X. “This was a failure you could see coming — Trump sees Europe’s wavering, hesitation and concessions as the weaknesses that they are.”