Apple’s costs are about to go way up thanks to tariffs. The biggest question facing the world’s most valuable company now is whether to make customers pay for it—or investors.
It’s a question with no easy answers—as evidenced by Apple’s share-price wipeout Thursday. At one point the loss was equal to about $275 billion in market cap. Apple was the worst hit among megacap tech stocks in the tariff-sparked selloff, given that it is the only one in the group that depends on hardware not made in the U.S. for the majority of its revenue.
Many questions remain about the exact impact, especially considering that Apple won exemptions from tariffs during Trump’s first presidency. But it is unlikely to be slight; Srini Pajjuri of Raymond James said the hit could amount to 25% of his projected per-share earnings for Apple in the current fiscal year that ends in September. Atif Malik of Citigroup estimates that tariffs on imports from China alone could hit Apple’s gross margins by about 9%.