AppleZulu

shrave10 said:

AppleZulu said:

shrave10 said:

Whitehouse is right here IMO.  Unless Epic, Nintendo, and third party app stores for iOS all reduce their own commissions to developers to zero as well, Pres. Trump has full right to raise EU tariffs to the amount to recover any illegal fines to US companies.  

It is not fair that all other platform vendors can charge a platform fee commission while Apple is not allowed to do same to recover costs of development, support, and marketing.  Core platform licensing fees can be negotiated to be on similar or even slightly lower than that of other platform vendors but it can not be zero.  

I feel like a lot of people don’t understand how tariffs work. They are a government tax on goods being imported into this country. The US importers pay the tax. Then, either they eat that cost, or add it to the price of the goods as they are sold to US consumers. 

So what you’re proposing here seems to be that the federal government should collect $570 million in taxes from US consumers who buy EU-made goods and then give those tax dollars to Apple so they can pay the $570 million fine to the EU. 

That ought to show ‘em. 

That's a short term view.  The reason EU manufacturing wants tariffs down is because of the longer term implications.  For ex. cars manufactured in EU will drop in marketshare > raises costs on their cars due to loss of economies of scale > negative feedback loop.  

 Meanwhile US manufactured cars gain market share, gain advantages of scaling up volumes, drop in costs > positive feedback loop.  

So yes, tariffs may be paid by US importers.  But in the long run, it leads to reorienting of supply chains and jobs that go with it.

It's not a "short view." I'm calling out the nonsensical idea of the US collecting a tariff to "recover" the EU fines. Collecting a tax from US consumers in order to pay a fine to the EU does nothing to effect the EU's position on the fine, other than perhaps to provoke them to increase the fine, which will then also either be paid by Apple or as you propose, by the US consumer.

As for your pivot to extolling the protectionist virtues of tariffs, that's irrelevant to this case as well. $570 million is six one-hundredths of a percent of the value of EU goods imported into the US last year. Increasing tariffs to "recover" Apple's $570 million fine would have no perceptible protectionist impact on US goods competing with EU goods. Increasing tariffs to the point that it could have the effect you describe still means that the US consumer pays for it. They will either pay more for the imported item, or pay more for a "protected" US-made item. Alternatively, as will be the case for many things, US consumer will be unable to purchase many items at any price, because prohibitively high tariffs are already causing many US importers and retailers to simply cancel import orders entirely, even as there are no US-made alternatives to replace them, and no viable way to start making them here at any point in the near to mid-term future.

shrave10 said:

Whitehouse is right here IMO.  Unless Epic, Nintendo, and third party app stores for iOS all reduce their own commissions to developers to zero as well, Pres. Trump has full right to raise EU tariffs to the amount to recover any illegal fines to US companies.  

It is not fair that all other platform vendors can charge a platform fee commission while Apple is not allowed to do same to recover costs of development, support, and marketing.  Core platform licensing fees can be negotiated to be on similar or even slightly lower than that of other platform vendors but it can not be zero.  

I feel like a lot of people don’t understand how tariffs work. They are a government tax on goods being imported into this country. The US importers pay the tax. Then, either they eat that cost, or add it to the price of the goods as they are sold to US consumers. 

I am trying to imagine the response if Apple's profit had dropped by 71% and Tim Cook got on the call to say he was going to cut back his extracurricular activities that were alienating Apple's customer base to only two days a week. I mean, Chief Executive Officer is a part-time job, right? 

9secondkox2 said:

Spreading it around now doesn’t hide the original apple-focused discrimination. 

“Oh.  They’ll notice if we steal more big money from apple. Maybe we will steal less and then also get some from other companies too. That should do it.”

total sham operation. 

Interesting. You’ve been confidently telling us how, as part of a brilliantly planned strategy, Trump’s tariff “negotiations” were going to protect Apple from the EU. 

applesauce007 said:

It is in the interest of the whole world to keep iPhone prices down for all big businesses to buy them.
Countries would be ill advised to apply tariffs on iPhones or parts as it would be harmful to their citizens and businesses.
Not to mention that China would retaliate against them possibly in a worse manner than the US.

Have faith in Apple management.

Time will tell.

Apple management will do what they can, but Apple does not exist in a vacuum. Even if they were entirely spared of any direct tariff anywhere, the economic chaos that affects everything else will ultimately slow their sales and disrupt their supply chains. People who can't afford or can't even find basic necessities are not going to be queuing up en masse at the Apple Store to buy the latest iPhone.