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President Trump threatening tech giant Apple with 25% duties on overseas made iPhones. Trump saying on a Truth Social post that he expects Apple's iPhones to quote be manufactured and built in the United States, not India or any place else. But it's now only Apple that faces this tariff threat. The president sharing further details in a press conference earlier this afternoon.

It would be more. It would be also a Samsung and anybody that makes that product. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair. So, anybody that makes that product, and that'll start on, I guess, the end of June. It'll come out. I think we have that appropriately done by the end of June. So, if they make that product, now, again, when they build their plant here, there's no tariff. So, they're going to be building plants here, but I had an understanding with him that he wouldn't be doing this. He said he's going to India to build plants. I said, that's okay to go to India, but you're not going to sell into here without a tariff.

Well, here with more now is Corey Johnson, a Piscataway Capital Research Chief market strategist and host of the Drill Down podcast. Corey, my friend, always great to see you. So, let's just dig right into this news, uh, Corey. So, Trump going right after Apple. He's threatening Apple with this 25% levy if they don't move iPhone manufacturing here to the United States. You saw that headline, Corey. Give us your take. What did you make of it?

Well, I mean, you guys have covered this quite well. I mean, the notion that, um, it's it's as easy as as putting up a factory and building it here just isn't the truth. It's not how it works. But let's I I spent a lot of time today working on kind of let's work through some of these ideas and why does it cost? Why, you know, there's been all this speculation, maybe a 3,500 or $4,000 iPhone. Do you want an Indian or Chinese phone, the iPhone that costs $1,000 or the same thing in the US would cost $4,000 and what would it look like? What would it take to do that? And you know, the biggest reason, obviously, is labor. A Chinese worker might make $4 to $5 an hour. An Indian worker might make $4 an hour. A US worker is going to make $20 to $30 an hour, at least that's what they make in in a factory job right now, to forget the highly skilled jobs that would be required. We also don't have a workforce that's been trained to do these things, whereas the workforces in China were even India. So, Apple's been working with Foxconn to develop an ecosystem since 2017 to build phones in India. They're just expanding that responding to the tariff regime, but maybe not responding at the speed of a tweet.

Well, and I guess then the question becomes, Corey, it's truly good to see you. What what Apple does about this, right? Because Tim Cook has been trying to, you know, I won't use the words cozy up, but he's certainly tried to make nice with President Trump in various ways. He has talked about

You mean the million dollar contribution to the inauguration committee like that?

Well, and and the pledges of future manufacturing in the US, right? So, but that obviously hasn't done the trick. So, I mean, what what does do the trick in this case?

Um, who knows? I mean, this does seem to be a policy on a whim. Um, you know, I've been I've been chatting today with with conservative friends who support President Trump, trying to see their take on this. And the instant response I got was jobs, jobs, jobs. We want jobs. And I pressed them kind of to think about that, like what does that look like? You know, one of the reasons the iPhone is is the cost that it is, I won't call something costs $1,000 cheap, although what it does is kind of amazing. But the reason the iPhone is so cheap is because the systems around that have been built for such a long time. The component supply chains that are built right around the factories where the devices are made. This this requires long-term economic planning both by government and by industry, and by the supporting industries, right? The Foxconn plants that are built to build the devices from Apple. The semiconductor plants that are in a range surrounding these such such that nothing is more than, you know, 50 miles apart or something. That takes a lot of planning and a lot of time. And so, how does a company respond to these these policy by tweet? And it might be to just kind of stall and to just kind of deal with it for a while because the next administration of four years, whether it's Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance or you know, fill in the blank of AOC or or you know, whatever you might imagine in our future as a president, is probably going to have some more long-term planning aspects to it, such that we don't have these kinds of shocks. And so, maybe the companies just try to kick things they can down the road for a while.