The trade war in the post WTO scenario between the United States and China seems to have escalated Monday when the US President Donald Trump slapped 10 percent duty on all imports from China in an apparent effort to curtail Chinese imports acceptability in the American market.
The tariff covering imports from China seem to spare products specifically destined for Apple assembly centers in California; to be specific components for Apple Watch and other consumer gadgets like Iphones, IPad etc. have been spared the duty slap. However imports products destines for other vendors in United States dealing with technology hardware and used indirectly by the Apple might face the brunt of the trade war.
As per the information available, hardware components used in the systems managing iCloud like network servers, semi-conductors and hardware used by internet services are going to pass on the cost push impact of the duty slap to the end user/ consumer. Observers’ privy to the debate between the Department of Trade and Apple maintain that among the list of gadgets Apple shared with the US Government the iPhone was not listed however the watch and air pods were specifically mentioned. The same were let off the hook by the trade authorities.
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As things stand, the tariffs will applicable from September 24, 2018@ 10 percent, which will be escalated to 25 percent from the start of the next calendar year@25 percent. The trade war and its sudden escalation strongly indicates at the few choices United States have in relation to its geo political and trade relations with the Chinese giant. The lure of cheap production costing in China; where almost all the global brands whether in mobiles or in the computer hardware have their assembly units in; is hard to ignore by the mainstream US industry brands in all category of products.
Over that the US government bid to control what they feel as Chinese trade invasion into their market is an issue which needs a much more sensitive approach to deal with the things than the “Trump” approach. It remains to be seen whether the trade war will further impact major US brands in the coming days or there are chances of reversal of the same under the influence of “better sense”.
