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The company counts on the sale of devices for three-quarters of its nearly $400 billion in annual revenue, and it makes almost all of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas.
- April 3, 2025Updated 4:31 p.m. ET
On Thursday morning, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, woke up to the worst day for his company’s stock in five years.
Apple shares fell more than 9 percent in response to President Trump’s plan to put steep tariffs on products made abroad. The declines at the world’s most valuable company led a sharp sell-off in tech stocks as the Nasdaq composite index, which is loaded with technology companies, sank nearly 6 percent.
Collectively, the largest tech companies, which have been at the forefront of the U.S. economy over the past decade, lost nearly $1 trillion in the day of trading. The declines at Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon resulted in one of the industry’s worst-performing days since the Covid-19 pandemic turned the global economy upside down.
Instead of “liberation day,” as Mr. Trump branded his tariff news conference, some market observers began calling it “obliteration day.” Richard Kramer, an analyst at Arete Research, said, “Today is an across-the-board disruption of the American economy, so anything with consumer exposure is getting creamed.”
Apple was at the forefront of the tech industry’s drop because it makes almost all of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas. The company counts on the sale of those devices for three-quarters of its nearly $400 billion in annual revenue. It will either have to cover the costs of tariffs, cutting into its profits, or pass them on to customers by raising prices, which could reduce the number of devices it sells.
The potential hit to the company’s profits triggered one of its steepest declines in its share price during trading since March 2020, when Apple fell 10 percent as fears of the coronavirus triggered a market sell-off.
