The deployment of the rate unrolls global actions, Silicon Valley Tech shares among the hardest

The stock market values ​​of the Silicon Valley technology giants fell from a cliff in the middle of a world sale after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on Wednesday afternoon that should increase American prices and ignite trade wars with countries around the world.

The pricing announcement launched a breathtaking dive on the US stock market, and at the end of the negotiation Thursday afternoon, Apple and Meta stock prices fell 9%, and the IT fleece of Santa Clara Titan Nvidia was dropped by almost 8%. Google Parent Alphabet and the cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks slipped by almost 5%.

Trump announced a minimum rate of 10%on imports from April 5, the tax rate being much higher on the products of certain countries such as China, with 34%, Taiwan, with 32%, Vietnam, with 46%and the European Union, with 20%, from April 9.

“President Trump refuses to let the United States take advantage of it and estimates that prices are necessary to ensure fair trade, protecting American workers and reducing the trade deficit – this is an emergency,” said the White House in a information sheet on Wednesday.

For Apple, Meta and Nvidia, the blow was clearly worse than in the main stock market indices, where the Dow Jones dropped by 4%, the S&P 500 has flowed almost 5% – for its worst day since the pandemic crushed the economy in 2020 – and the 6%Nasdaq.

“Trump’s prices and instability are wreaking havoc with business equities,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress technological industry group. “It makes investors nervous, it makes companies uncertain on the expansion levels, capital, supply chains.”

For Silicon Valley technology giants, prices would considerably disrupt the manufacture and sales of hardware, software and services.

“This will affect their profitability and could force prices to increase, which can lead to lower sales,” said Stanford law professor Alan Sykes, who studies international trade. “Everyone considers high prices as a potential threat to their net profit.”

Adding to investors’ concerns to Silicon Valley companies is the threat of punitive responses targeted by the pricing countries looking for the leverage with the Trump administration, said Sykes.

“Large American technological companies are the most profitable global companies we have, so they are the natural objectives of reprisals from foreign governments,” said Sykes. Other nations such as China or EU members may slam the giants of Silicon Valley with taxes or hit them with anti-monopoly legal actions to exert pressure on the United States, said Sykes.

“All these policies that affect the well-being of these companies are potentially at stake if we have a large-scale trade war,” said Sykes. “If I were another country and I wanted to put pressure on the United States to change its habits, I would go after the most influential American companies, and the Silicon Valley companies are among the most influential.”

For the technological giants of this region, the prices offer a Smackdown which contrasts with the presence of their CEOs on the stage of the inauguration of Trump.

“I suspect that some of Mr. Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters have doubts,” said Sykes.

Silicon Valley technological companies such as Apple and Nvidia, whose companies depend on Chinese manufacturing and markets, “will be the most under pressure,” said Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities analyst.

Given that the products and services of technological companies are superimposed in almost all other industries, they can undergo additional damage beyond their own ailments induced by prices, said the economic strategist of the UC Berkeley Haas business school, Olaf Groth.

In the United States, many hope that prices are a temporary negotiation tactic, but with Trump’s declared objective to level American commercial imbalances with other countries, it is not clear what he would demand from other nations, said Sykes.

“The trade deficit should not disappear, regardless of negotiations,” said Sykes. “There has never been a reason to expect bilateral trade to be balanced. I have a big trade deficit with the safeway: they do not buy me anything.

“The idea that negotiation will get rid of bilateral commercial imbalances is just madness.”

The White House information sheet on prices said that commercial deficits “have led to the hollow of our manufacturing base”, leading to “a lack of incentive to increase advanced interior manufacturing capacity”.

Ives in a note from Thursday afternoon to investors called the idea of ​​making Apple iPhones in America “a fantastic tale”. Wedbush analysts believe that the “vast majority” of iPhone production comes from China, and that the versions made in the country would likely cost $ 3,500, said Ives.

However, in a note earlier Thursday morning, Ives described the effects of actions prices such as a “category 5 hurricane” which – so temporary – has a good time to take certain technological stocks such as Apple, Alphabet, Palant, Paloza Alto Networks, Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft.

“During the next 24 hours, the world will quickly realize that these rate rates will never remain as they are shown, otherwise it would be an self-inflicted economic Armageddon that Trump would send the United States and the world in the coming year,” said Ives. “We must assume that this is the start of a negotiation and these rates will not hold.”

However, opportunistic investors should not embody fast returns, because the duration of the tumult rate poses a large unknown, noted Groth.

“It could be as much as a year, if not more,” he said. “You should have an appetite to hold so long.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Originally published: April 3, 2025 at 5:28 p.m.