Apple CEO Tim Cook did all the right things, or so it seemed. A December pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, a $1 million personal donation to President Trump’s inauguration, a February White House meeting followed by a promise to spend more than $500 billion in the United States in the next four years, including hiring 20,000 staff and building a Texas-sized server factory near Houston.

None of that helped on Thursday, as the White House’s blanket global tariff blitz took a $300 billion, 9.2% bite out of Apple’s shares. The world’s largest public company by market cap had its biggest one-day wipeout since Covid’s 2020 shock. In the process, it offered a clear window into what analysts fear will be, at best, a short-term disruption of the entire post-war global economic order. No sweat.

No Holiday From Tariffs

More than 90% of Apple’s manufacturing is based in China, according to analysts at Citi, a country facing combined tariffs of 54% on imports to the US. And even though the iPhone maker has already been diversifying supply chains away from the Middle Kingdom, that doesn’t exactly help in a global trade war where Washington’s crosshairs are trained everywhere except the US.

For example, Apple supplier Foxconn plans to more than double its iPhone production in India this year to up to 30 million units. But India is facing a 27% tariff. Vietnam, which is home to 20% of iPad manufacturing and 90% of assembly for wearables including Apple Watch, is facing a 46% tariff. Thailand, home to a tiny share of Macbook production, is facing a 36% tariff. The only silicon lining to this cloud is an exemption for semiconductors from the new tariffs, which would shield Apple from levies on chips from Taiwan, now facing a 32% duty. That doesn’t do any good, however, for non-tech manufacturers, whose global supply chains are similarly exposed:

• Take sneaker companies, which rely even more heavily on manufacturing in Southeast Asia and were administered a Michael Jordan-like beatdown on Thursday. Nike, which makes half its shoes in Vietnam, fell 14.4% and Skechers, which makes 4 in 10 shoes there, shed 17%. Outside of Southeast Asia, JPMorgan issued a warning about Swiss watchmakers like Swatch and Piaget-owner Richemont, which were down 4% and 6%.
• The semiconductor exemption, meanwhile, is not a silver bullet that will spare Apple, which was the worst performing of the Magnificent Seven tech stocks Thursday. During Trump’s first term, he cut a deal with China to sidestep tariffs on goods including Chinese-made phones and computers, but Citi analysts said Thursday that, without a similar deal, things could get rough: “If Apple cannot get exempted this time and assuming Apple gets hit by the accumulative 54% China tariffs and does not pass it through, we estimate about 9% negative impact to the company’s total gross margin.”

The Price You Pay: Rosenblatt Securities analysts said, if tariffs remain, the cheapest iPhone 16, currently $799, could rise to $1,142 or 43% more if Apple chooses to pass on the cost to consumers. UBS analysts estimate tariffs on Vietnam will increase the price of consumer goods from there by up to 12%, meaning a pair of Nike Air Force 1 Lows, currently $115, could cost $129. Those old Air Jordans with a tiny hole in the bottom of your closet suddenly aren’t looking so bad.

The contestants in Washington’s long-running game show are now known, we think. They’re vying for what’s been behind Door No. 1 for the past 90 days: TikTok.

After extending the sale-or-ban deadline for TikTok earlier this year, the ByteDance-owned social media platform is once again up against a deadline, which is this Saturday. Rumors have swirled of likely buyers all week — Oracle, Amazon, Andreessen Horowitz, or possibly some consortium of backers — and the VEEP has said an announcement could come as soon as today.

But a few names have been noticeably absent from the entire process: legacy media players like Disney, Comcast, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. So why did the old guard — desperate for a way into the modern world of user-generated content — refuse to throw its proverbial mouse-eared hat in the ring? This might rank as the media industry’s biggest missed opportunity of the decade.

Roll the Credits

The idea of legacy media buying into social media isn’t new. In his 2019 memoir, Disney CEO and M&A king Bob Iger revealed an acquisition of Twitter in 2016 was approved by both companies’ boards, until Disney walked away at the last minute. These days, whiffing on social media seems to be haunting the industry. YouTube has taken over living room TV screens. And last week, Deloitte published a new study confirming what everyone already knew: 56% of Gen Z and 43% of millennials find user-generated social media content “more relevant than traditional TV shows and movies.”

It’s the type of data that can spur an identity crisis; Disney is now reportedly planning to add a user-generated content feature to its standalone ESPN streaming service, due to launch later this year. But just two decades ago, the crisis of Netflix spurred Disney, Fox, and NBCUniversal to launch Hulu as a joint venture. This time around, debt acquired from the Streaming Wars arms race (Disney, for example, purchased 21st Century Fox for $80 billion in 2019, which looks like a massive overpay compared with TikTok’s rumored $100 billion valuation), may cause legacy players to miss out — likely to their own detriment:

• “TikTok has completely changed the way people consume content, making it a major competitor to traditional media platforms,” Christena Garduno, CEO of performance marketing firm Media Culture, told The Daily Upside. “If a media giant had formed a joint venture… they could have collectively maintained some level of control in the creator economy rather than being left on the sidelines.”
• “I think many [legacy media companies] are challenged,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told The Daily Upside. “And others are afraid. Nobody wants to make an expensive mistake. Big Tech is bidding and will win.”

One caveat: Paramount may end up allied with TikTok anyhow. It’s soon to be owned by SkyDance Media, which just so happens to be majority-owned by Larry Ellison, the founder of leading TikTok bidder Oracle.

I Fought the Law: It’s true that legacy media companies wouldn’t have been shoo-ins to win TikTok. The president, who is taking a hands-on approach to facilitating a suitable TikTok sale, has been engaged in protracted legal fights with the news organizations owned by legacy media players. Which means even if they had wanted to make a bid, they likely wouldn’t have been the White House’s top pick.

Should vape-makers be allowed to sell e-cigs flavored like pink lemonade, creme brulee, and whatever “Jimmy The Juice Man Strawberry Astronaut” is? The answer from the FDA has been a firm “no,” and it’s now backed up by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Triton and Vapetasia sued the FDA in 2021 after the agency denied the duo permission to market flavored vape liquids (including Jimmy the Juice Man, which is a real variety). Seven federal courts sided with the FDA but one took the companies’ side. The FDA appealed, pushing the case up to the Supreme Court.

The high court’s ruling effectively bans flavored vape products because of concerns that they could appeal to kids. The FDA has only approved 34 e-cig products — all of which are tobacco or menthol flavored.

Rising Vaporwave

Anyone who’s been to a gas station recently may realize there are more e-cigs on the shelves than just the FDA’s roughly three dozen approved products. While the FDA has rejected more than 26 million flavored-vape applications, according to an advocacy group, unauthorized e-cigs with smoothie-like names have flooded the market.

That has met with backlash from Big Tobacco:

• Companies including British American Tobacco and Altria are lobbying the president to snuff out unauthorized vape-sellers, which could be on the hook for civil and criminal penalties.
• Big Tobacco argues that the illegal first-movers are winning market share while rule-followers are stuck waiting on the sidelines.

At the same time, major companies are pivoting away from vapes to focus on the next generation of nicotine. Smoke-free products, including the bestselling nicotine pouch Zyn, now make up about 40% of Marlboro-maker Philip Morris’s revenue.

Smokeless Alarm: The FDA started regulating e-cigs in 2016, a year after Juul’s USB-like devices entered the market — and caused a public panic as teens vaped in high school bathrooms. While regulators made an example of Juul, they can’t seem to keep up with the flood of copycats that came for Juul’s market share as the e-cig company grappled with an FDA ban and about 5,000 lawsuits. Plus, the government is giving Big Tobacco mixed signals: President Trump vowed to save flavored vapes on his Truth Social platform last fall. Smokeless nicotine could be a more surefire bet, especially for Philip Morris: The FDA has approved 20 Zyn products so far in flavors like coffee and cinnamon.