Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request
for comment, but has previously said the Mac
Pro will continue to be designed and engineered
in California. The company hasn’t said where
the computer will be assembled in the future
though. Trump demanded in his tweet that they
continue to be made in the U.S if Apple doesn’t
want to be exposed to a 25% tariff on electronics
made in China.
Just hours later, Trump once again asserted the
U.S. should have first dibs over the companies
headquartered here. In a tweet, he vowed to
retaliate against France for the new digital tax
the country is imposing on big tech companies
that sell online advertising.
If anyone taxes the companies, Trump wrote
in a tweet , it should be the U.S. He stuck in a
dig about French wine, writing “I’ve always said
American wine is better than French wine!”
Investors appeared unfazed by Trump’s sparring
with one of the world’s biggest and most
powerful companies. Apple’s stock edged up
$1.22 to $208.24.
The reaction probably would have been
different had Trump made it clear that the tariffs
will be applied to Apple’s top-selling product,
the iPhone, which has long been assembled
in China. Mac computers, on the other hand,
now represent a relatively small part of Apple’s
business, unlike the company’s early years when
the computers were its marquee products.
Mac computers held a 6% share of the worldwide
personal computer market during the second
quarter of this year, ranking well behind China’s
Lenovo as well as HP and Dell in the U.S.,
according to the research firm Gartner Inc.