More Companies To Say Trade Wars Are Affecting Their Bottom Lines, Trump Adviser Says
The Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a loss of hundreds of points early on Thursday morning, which investors say was prompted after tech giant Apple announced it lowered its expectations for the next quarter, the result of a prolonged “trade war” between the United States and China.
According to one economic adviser to President Donald Trump, Apple won’t be the only company to say the trade dispute has hurt them.
Per a tweet from Bloomberg News Deputy White House Editor Mike Dorning, Trump adviser Kevin Hassett said that “a heck of a lot of” of U.S. companies will join in making complaints about the effects of the trade war.
“It’s not just Apple,” Hassett added.
Hassett was speaking with CNN’s Poppy Harlow when he made the comments, according to another tweet from CNN’s Cristina Alesci, who inserted her own commentary in the matter. “That will certainly calm investors,” she said.
However, Hassett’s predictions weren’t all doom-and-gloom, and for the most part, his commentary was a defense of Trump rather than an indictment of the trade war. In yet another tweet from account CNN Newsroom, Hassett sounded downright optimistic about a recovery for Apple and other tech companies.
“If we have a successful negotiation with China, then Apple’s sales and everybody else’s sales will recover,” Hassett said. “[R]ight now China is feeling the blow really of our tariffs.”
Apple has slipped to the fifth-biggest phone seller in China, trailing four domestic producers https://t.co/BT4fFqlTxB
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 3, 2019
As of Thursday morning, stock in Apple tumbled by more than 10 percent, according to reporting from CNBC. It puts the company on pace to see its worst performing day on the stock market since 2013.
At one point valued at $1.1 trillion, the company says it has lost more than $450 billion in market value over the second half of 2018. The stock loss, investors say, is due to lower projections made by the company on Wednesday regarding how well Apple believes it will do in the first quarter of this year. Those projections were lowered by $9 billion.
According to previous reporting from the Inquisitr, Apple placed much of the blame for its lowered expectations on the trade war between Beijing and Washington. Tariffs placed on China by the U.S., which were reciprocated by tariffs put on the U.S. by China, have diminished sales on the other side of the Pacific.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he was “optimistic” that an end to the trade wars could come soon, but that the company would be taking cost-saving steps “on the things we can control” in the meantime.
