Trump advisor on 25% tax threat: ‘Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers’

After President Trump threatened to slap Apple with a 25% tariff on iPhones made outside the U.S., one of his top economic advisors is now downplaying the potential fallout of the proposed tax.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the White House doesn’t actually want to hurt Apple, despite the rhetoric:

“Everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now, to try to negotiate down the tariffs. (…) In the end, we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what the update is, but we don’t want to harm Apple.”

Hassett’s statement came just days after Trump posted on social media that he expects Apple to manufacture iPhones for the U.S. market on U.S. soil, or face a 25% tariff.

Apple, of course, has long assembled its flagship product in China and more recently expanded iPhone production in India and Vietnam. That seems to have annoyed the president.

Hassett also repeated a familiar talking point from the Trump team that companies, not consumers, should absorb the cost of tariffs:

“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply.”

That mirrors earlier comments directed at Walmart, when Trump told the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after it said it would have to pass rising costs on to shoppers. Likewise, Trump pressured Amazon not to follow through on displaying tariff-related costs on product listings, labeling the idea a “hostile and political act.”