Trump Said Tim Cook ‘Made A Good Case’ About Impact Of Tariffs

President Trump said on Monday (Aug. 19) that he spoke with Apple CEO Tim Cook over how U.S. tariffs on China will affect the company, and also how they might help Samsung, a competitor from South Korea, according to a report by Reuters.

Trump, speaking to reporters at a New Jersey airport, said that Cook “made a good case” about how the tariffs could adversely affect Apple, especially since Samsung won’t face the same restrictions. The U.S. and Samsung made their own trade agreement last September.

The tariffs are expected to be implemented in two phases, the first on Sept. 1 and the second on Dec. 15. They will affect $300 billion of Chinese products.

“I thought he made a very compelling argument, so I’m thinking about it,” Trump said about his conversation with Cook.

The comments help to boost U.S. stock futures, and Trump tweeted earlier that talks were “doing very well with China.”

Some of Apple’s products, like AirPods, the Apple Watch and the HomePod, will face the first round of tariffs. The second round will affect laptops and iPhones.

The news comes at a critical time for Apple, who could announce the newest iteration of the iPhone as early as next month.

Apple released its newest iOS 13 beta to developers on Aug. 15, which included an asset called “HoldForRelease” that showed a home screen of an iPhone with the date set to Sept. 10 – around the time the tech giant usually holds its fall press event.

The iPhone 11 isn’t expected to be all that different from previous models. In fact, Barclays semiconductor analysts predicted in May that Apple’s 2019 iPhones will offer “relatively few design changes,” with JPMorgan Chase analysts agreeing that major updates would happen in 2020.

“Our expectations include all three Sep-2020 iPhones (5.4″/6.1″/6.7″ screen sizes) will adopt OLED displays and 5G baseband modems (with support for mmWave frequencies), and at least two of the three models adopting world-facing 3D Sensing (Time of Flight) driving industry-leading AR/VR capabilities, which can be leveraged by custom-built applications (including games),” wrote analyst Samik Chatterjee.