A $2,300 iPhone could be in Americans’ near future after President Trump announced hefty tariffs on imports from China and other major trading partners, experts warned.
Apple’s total cost of parts for the iPhone 16 Pro (256GB), for example, will go from $550 to $820, analyst Wayne Lam of TechInsights told The Wall Street Journal.
That tariff-ic increase is thanks to a 54% total markup on imports from China, where the vast majority of iPhones are assembled — using parts from all over the world.
Apple managed to secure an exemption from the China tariffs in Trump’s first time — but so far there are no exemptions for any single product.
With manufacturing, testing, and other overhead, the total cost for Apple to make its phones is likely to go up about 43%, analysts at Rosenblatt Securities told Reuters.
If Apple passes the buck onto its American customers, the baseline iPhone 16 could go from $799 to around $1,500.
The tip-top-end iPhone 16 Pro Max with 6.9-inch screen and one-terabyte storage would go from $1,599 to $2,300.
For that money, you could keep your current phone, go on a four-night Disney Cruise to the Bahamas, and still have a few hundred bucks left over.
The iPhone 16 sports a better processor, battery and camera, Apple Intelligence, and a handful of other features, but those might not be enough to convince customers to shell out.
According to the WSJ’s analysis, the biggest single expense on an iPhone is for the rear camera, which comes from Japan and costs about $127. Next, the processor from Taiwan, costs about $90. The display costs $38, and comes from South Korea. The only major American-made part is the memory, which costs about $22.
While many Apple customers procure iPhones via promotional payment plans rolled into their cellular contracts, overall iPhone sales have been lagging across major markets, analysts told Reuters.
That said, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick proposed a third option: Just make iPhones in the United States.
“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Lutnick said in an interview with Face the Nation.
But hiring tiny-screw-screwers in America instead of China could bring the cost to manufacture an iPhone up from around $30 to $300, Wayne Lam told the Journal.
On top of that, Apple would still have to pay a premium for the imported parts, unless it managed to manufacture those domestically, too.
