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No American tech company has bet as heavily as Apple Inc. on the economic interdependence of China and the US. Apple needs Chinese workers to make its iPhones and Chinese consumers to buy them. This would seem to make the deteriorating relationship between the two global superpowers uniquely dangerous for the company and its chief executive officer, Tim Cook, who was responsible for Apple’s decision to outsource production to China long before he took over the top position from Steve Jobs in 2011.
But until recently, the US-China trade war that began during Donald Trump’s presidency and intensified during Joe Biden’s had barely slowed down the company. Sure, Biden launched an aggressive campaign to keep China from developing advanced semiconductors and called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator,” and Xi pursued a strategy to limit China’s reliance on Western-made technology—but none of that seemed to matter. Apple logged some $73 billion in revenue in the region it calls Greater China—which includes its operations in Taiwan and Hong Kong—in 2023, up from $32 billion in 2014. Business slowed in China in 2023 but not as fast as it did elsewhere. About 19% of Apple’s revenue came from the country in the fiscal year ended in September, up slightly from 2022.
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