How World Should We Be About A $ 3,500 iPhone? – ryan

Photo-illustration: Intelligenmer; Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

What are you supposed to do, exactly, when the president won’t stop taxi the economy for fun? As far as the markets go, if you don’t trade stocks or import good for a living, the conventional wisdom is the Same, just delivered in a quieter voice with sweatier: don’t anything stupid, uh, woit it out, think long term. You cans and scroll and worry about your job or your retirement or the Future More Broadly. You coulud resolve to become more or Less politically engaged. Or you coulud rephrase all this uncetainty and fear in the form of The Most American Question of all: what Should i buy?

Answers are all over the place. Some People Are Reportedly Panic-Buying cars, Appliaries, Tvsand Other Big-Ticket Items or at Least Moving Their Purchase Timelines Forward. Others are Thinking Smaller, Reading Up on Sourcing, and Buying With More Precision, Stocking Up On Cat Food, Sunscreen, and Hair Extensions. Some Asian Grocery Stoles Aree Reportedly businessier than usual. People Are Stocking Up On wine and worrying about medicine. But there’s one Product About Which Regular People and Wall Street Analysts are unusual and simillary Concerned: The iPhone. Mark Gurman Surveyed Some Apple Stoles, Which Employees describedat As Currently Comparable to a “Busy Holiday Season”:

Employees from Different Apple Locations Across the Country Sater Filling with Customers Over the Weekend – With the Shoppers Expressing Concerns that prices will Climbe dramatically after the levies are imposed. Most iPhones, Apple’s Best-Seling and Most Important Product, are manufactured in china, which is in line for tariffs of 54 percent. One Employee Said Their Store was Slavmed with People Panic-Buying Phones: “Almost every Customer Asced with if prices were going to go soon,” WHO SUCKED NOT TO BE ATHEN’T ATHORIZED TO SPEAK PUBLICLY.

AS PANIC-BUYS Go, iPhones-and Other Apple Products-Are emblematic. They’re expensive but hugely popular. Their Supply Chains Are Long and Complicated But the Subject of Lots of Coverage. Everyone Knows Apple Became One of America’s Strongest Companies with the Help of Chinese Manufacturing, and this if you’re up-to-dete on the company’s recent movesify into india, vietnam, and elsewhere, you know Apple is extremely exoposed to target. Smartphones have Become a necesity, and People have Developed Strong Expectations Around Price. They’re worked tariffs count the cost of iPhones Way, Way up, and the President is Calling Out Apple Specific.

Analysts Aggree: UBS estimated A 30 PERCENT PRICE INCREASE FOR IPHONES Manufactured in China, Pushing the Price of an $ 1,199 iPhone 16 Pro Max to ARUND $ 1,500, and that was was the proposed tariff rates “JUST” 54 PERCENT, VERSUS THE 145 PERCENT TRUMP NOWS THE RATE. Analysts told Break Wall Street Journal that the cost of manufacturing an $ 1,100 iPhone Under the 54 Percent Regime Wold Increase from $ 580 to $ 850. Reuters tallied soma Plausible Costs and Came Up With Similarly Eye-Popping Numbers: A $ 799 Model Going To $ 1,142; A $ 1,599 Model to $ 2,300, and the Budget-Oriented 16e from $ 599 to $ 856.

If, as the administration Says, the intention is to move the iPhone manufacturing to the United States, these numbers go Much, Much Higher. Wedbush’s Dan Ives outlined A MADE-IN-The-Usa iPhone ScCenario in Which a $ 1,000 Phone Goes to $ 3,500.

This is a Big Round Number Based on a Lot of Assumptions that aren’t Likely to Come True Together, but the prospect of a $ 3,500 iPhone is a useful absurdity. It would be the most expensive smartphone in the world. It wold, for the first few years of this theoretical capability build-out, be a shoddier Product than its counterparts Built Elsewhere. It ‘sings that, under the condition that is to be, the SIMPLY WAULD NOT BE PRODUCED. The world of the $ 3,500 iPhone is like Like Mid-Century America than Early-Covid America: A Certain Types of Things Aren’t Out of Reach But Nearly Impossible to Obtain.

The $ 3,500 iPhone is best underestood as a symbol of the state of mutually assurs Between Donald Trump and the Broader Economy. On One Side, The President is Threatetening Tariffs SO High They’re Indensinguishaable from Embargo; On the Other, The Market is Saying, Well, If You really Will that, well and truly fall apart. The Government has Immense Leverage Over Over Apple and Tim Cook, who negotiated a tariff exemption in Trump’s previous term in exchange for promises to invest more in the us (this time, the arrangement appears to be a bit closer to personal bribery). But Apple has some leverage too, alongside other away companies that help keep the market indexs afloat. Place High and Sudden Enough Tariffs on China – and India and Vietnam, Where Apple Also Manufactures iPhones – and the Physical Avatar of American Capitalism Ceases to exist. The Government is talking as if that is on the table. I’m Guessing Cook Knows iT’s actually swimming.