Magnificent 7 rise after court strikes down tariffs; here’s how each company has skin in the game
Some of the biggest tech companies had the most to lose from the trade war.
The Magnificent 7 were all trading higher following news that a trade court struck down President Trump’s “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs. The administration has said it will appeal the decision, but if it holds, tariffs on imports from dozens of countries, including the current 30% tariff on China, would be lifted.
While the market overall is up on the news, Big Tech companies Apple, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia especially have skin in the trade war game to varying degrees.
Apple, which produces most of its products in China, likely had the most to lose out of any tech company in Trump’s trade war. On its latest earnings call, the company said the existing tariffs — it had been temporarily spared from tariffs on China but is awaiting sector-specific levies — would have cost it $900 million in the current quarter.
Amazon is highly dependent on importing goods for its e-commerce site from China. On the company’s last earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said that while tariffs hadn’t meaningfully affected prices or demand, they were causing a lot of uncertainty. It’s also unlikely that the CEO would have made a big deal about tariffs’ impact, as the company tries to stay out of the Trump administration’s line of sight.
China is a huge market for Nvidia, so it’s riding high on the tariff news, but it (and the AI supply chain generally) is also up on the news of its earnings beat yesterday. Meanwhile, Nvidia is delicately navigating an export ban to China for its H20s that slashed its annual revenue forecast by some $8 billion.
Amazon, Meta, and Google, which have giant advertising businesses, all face knock-on effects from lost Chinese advertising money thanks to tariffs.
While tariffs between the US and China don’t affect Tesla much since it manufactures the cars for each of those markets where it sells them, China is a major market for Tesla, and any anti-American sentiment affects its business there.
Tariffs have driven up costs of AI infrastructure hardware for Meta, and presumably the rest of the Mag 7, which all are building their AI prowess.
