Apple Stock Goes Down After President Trump Calls for Tech Giants to Come Home

The United States vs. China trade war is far from coming to an end, and a series of tweets published by President Donald Trump on Friday caused the shares of several American tech giants to decline massively.

Trump required US tech companies to start looking for what he describes as “an alternative to China,” as he wants a bigger part of their manufacturing to happen in local production facilities.

In his tweets, Donald Trump accuses China of stealing intellectual property and explains that American companies can avoid this in the future by moving operations to the United States.

Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 23 August 2019

“The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”

Apple stock going down

The tweets caused the shares of several American tech companies to decline substantially on Friday. As per CNBC, Apple shares fell 4.6%, while Qualcomm and Nvidia declined 4.7% and 5.2%, respectively.

Donald Trump claims he can “order” US companies to move the production to the United States under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), but US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says this option won’t be “exercised presently.”

“He would have the authority to do that under IEEPA if he declared an emergency; he has not done that. I think what he was saying is he's ordering companies to start looking because he wants to make sure, to the extent that we are in an extended trade war, that companies don't have these issues and move out of China,” he was quoted as saying by Telegraph.