The Supreme Court ruling striking down executive tariff exemptions exposes Apple to billions in new import duties on Chinese-manufactured products, “forcing the company to accelerate supply chain diversification and consider consumer price increases across its product lineup,” according to WebProNews.
The Supreme Court’s decision invalidated previous tariff exemptions that Apple had secured during earlier rounds of U.S.-China trade tensions. The ruling effectively means that Apple’s products — including iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and AirPods — will now be subject to new tariff schedules that the company had long worked to avoid.
WebProNews notes that the financial exposure is “staggering.” analysts estimate that Apple imports more than $100 billion worth of goods from China annually, and even modest tariff rates could shave billions from the company’s margins.
Tariffs are taxes collected by the US government from US businesses when they import goods. The tariff revenues are expressed as a percentage of monthly total import values that US businesses pay (monthly tariff revenue divided by monthly import value, by category or country), including shipping and insurance.
These percentages are generally lower than press reports of headline tariff rates because the headline rates do not take exemptions or delays into account. For example, in August 2025, Trump exempted aircraft from the general 15 percent tariff on imports from the European Union agreed at that time.
That said, based on data from a plethora of sources — including CNBC, USA Today, the Council on Foreign Relations, the University of Chicago News, American Enterprise Institute, the Prosperous American organization (using data from he Kiel Institute, a German economic policy think tank), Fortune, Peterson Institute for International Economics — U.S. consumers and companies are paying the vast majority—roughly 90% to 96%—of the costs from President Trump’s tariffs, not foreign nations. These tariffs act as import taxes, which U.S. firms typically pass on to consumers through higher prices on goods like furniture, electronics, and clothing.
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