Tariffs sent smartphone shipments from China down 72% last month
How do you like them exports, Apple?
Smartphone shipments from China got seriously hung up in April, as the (now paused) reciprocal tariffs between the two nations shocked some parts of the international supply chain into a standstill, with exports dropping 72% last month.
Immobile
According to Chinese customs data and numbers from Trade Data Monitor cited by Bloomberg, the country sent $689 million worth of smartphones to the US in April. That figure sat at $2.46 billion the month before and $2.27 billion for the same month last year. In fact, China’s smartphone shipment value hasn’t sunk this low since August 2011, when Apple fans were still getting to grips with the first iPhone with FaceTime and the American view of the East Asian nation was altogether rosier.
The monthly drop-off far outweighed the wider 21% decline seen across all Chinese exports to the US in April, with laptop and storage device shipments also showing sharp declines. Given how America has come to depend on China for its electric goods more and more — electronics was the biggest category of Chinese imports to the US last year, at $124 billion — the April figures could serve as a pretty stark wake-up call.
Still, while the precarious world of trade war suspensions and looming tariffs has already been wreaking havoc on America’s supply of iPhones and other devices, some experts can’t see giants like Apple shifting to full American-made mode in earnest any time soon.
