Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: just hours before a new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods was set to kick in, President Trump signed an executive order extending the pause by another 90 days. And this time, it’s especially good news for Apple.
Today’s move pushes the 145% tariff deadline to mid-November, giving Apple just enough breathing room to get through its fiscal Q4 without a major new cost burden.
That’s a big deal because Apple’s fiscal Q4 runs through the end of September, which will likely include the first weeks of iPhone 17 availability.
And while Apple has been working to shift U.S.-bound iPhone production to India, this extension gives the company some extra flexibility to source units from China if needed to meet U.S. demand.
During Apple’s Q3 2025 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said the company had taken an $800 million hit from tariffs in the quarter, $100 million less than what Apple had projected in its previous earnings report. Still, he warned of a bigger impact ahead:
“For the September quarter, assuming the current global tariff rates, policies, and applications do not change for the balance of the quarter, and no new tariffs are added, we estimate the impact to add about $1.1 billion to our costs.”
As always, there’s some debate over what exactly Cook meant, given the layers of conditionals in his remarks. Was he referring to no new tariffs beyond the looming 145% spike slated for today? Or was he talking about no new tariffs beyond the current 30% rate (which, as it turns out, is what held)?
Interestingly, Apple’s stock barely moved following the announcement and even during after-hours trading, suggesting that the market had already accounted for that possibility. Still, it will be interesting to see how the news affects Apple’s stock tomorrow, if at all.
Be it as it may, the fact of the matter is that Apple was just handed 90 more days of flexibility during a few of the most important weeks of the year. And beyond that, it can even start eyeing a tariff-spike-free holiday season, in case the deadline gets pushed once more in mid-November, or dropped altogether between now and then.
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