Apple probably cannot operate without ties to China: NYT

NEW YORK: Despite years of pressure, Apple's business is still so dependent on China that the tech giant can't operate without it, Xinhua reported, citing an article published on The New York Times (NYT) on Thursday.

"Several years before Donald J. Trump entered politics, Apple and its partners built massive factories across China to assemble iPhones. Mr Trump first campaigned for president by promising his supporters that he would force Apple to make those products in America," said the article.

Nearly a decade later, little has changed. Instead of bringing its manufacturing home, Apple shifted some production from China to India, Vietnam and Thailand. Almost nothing is made in America, and an estimated 80 per cent of iPhones are still made in China, it noted.

"Moves by the Trump administration to change Apple's behaviour risk damaging the world's most valuable publicly traded company. And any serious effort to move Apple's production to the United States -- if that is even possible -- would take a titanic effort by both the company and the federal government," it said.

In the four days after President Trump announced taxes on Chinese exports of 145 per cent last month, Apple lost US$770 billion in market capitalisation.

It regained some of those losses after Trump gave consumer electronics manufacturers in China a reprieve, it added.

-- BERNAMA