After President Trump threatened to slap Apple with a 25% price on iPhones made outside the United States, one of his best economic advisers now minimizes the potential repercussions of the proposed tax.
Speaking on CNBC‘s Squawk box On Tuesday, the director of the national economic council, Kevin Hassett, said that the White House did not really want to injure Apple, despite the rhetoric:
“Everyone is trying to give the impression that it is a disaster if there is a very small price on them at the moment, to try to negotiate the prices. (…) In the end, we will see what is happening, we will see what the update is, but we do not want to harm Apple.”
Hassett’s declaration occurred only a few days after Trump published on social networks which he expects to make Apple makes iphones for the American market on American soil, or faces a rate of 25%.
Apple, of course, has long gathered its flagship product in China and recently expanded iPhone production in India and Vietnam. It seems to have annoyed the president.
Hassett has also repeated a subject of familiar discussion of the Trump team that companies, not consumers, should absorb the cost of prices:
“If you think that Apple has a factory a place that has a defined number of iPhones that it produces and that it must sell them whatever happens, then Apple will support these prices, not consumers, because it is an elastic offer.”
This reflects previous comments addressed to Walmart, when Trump told the company to “eat the prices” after declaring that it should transmit the costs of buyers. Likewise, Trump put pressure on labeling The idea a “hostile and political act”.
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