APPLE'S* ARTFUL APPEARS : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

'' ANY SHIFT away from China would take a bite out of Apple ''. This great tech giant would struggle to operate if it relocated manufacturing of iPhones.

SEVERAL years before Donald J Trump entered politics, Apple and its partners built massive factories across China to assemble iPhones. Mr. Trump first campaigned for president by promising his supporters that he would force Apple to make those products in America.

Nearly a decade later, little has changed. Instead of bringing its manufacturing home, Apple shifted some production from China to India, Vietnam and Thailand. Almost nothing is made in America, and an estimated 80 percent of iPhones are still made in China.

Despite years of pressure, Apple's business is still so dependent on China that the tech giant can't operate without it. Moves by the Trump administration to change Apple's behaviour risk damaging the world's most valuable publicly traded company.

And any serious effort to move Apple's production to the United States - if that is even possible - would take a titanic effort by both the company and the U.S. government.

In the four days after President Trump announced taxes on Chinese exports of 145% last month, Apple lost $770 billion in market capitalization.

It regained some of those losses after Mr. Trump. gave electronics manufacturers in China a temporary reprieve.

One recent Thursday, Apple said that its new, cheaper iPhone and strong sales of apps and services had helped the company make $24.78 billion in quarterly profit, a 4.8 percent increase from a year ago.

The company sales rose 5 percent to $95.36 billion.

The results exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but during a call with analysts, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook, said that Tariffs had begun to take a bite out of company's business.

He estimated $900 million in costs in the current quarter because of the tariffs, provided the rates of those levies stay the same and no new fees are introduced.

Apple said this year that it would invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years and begin making artificial intelligence servers in Houston in 2026.

David Yaffe, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written case studies on Apple, said the scrutiny was warranted because '' they're the company most at risk in a complete breakdown of the United States and China.''

Gene Munster, a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, which invests in emerging technology companies, estimates that a complete breakdown between the United States and China would cut the value of Apple in half.

It would drop to being a $ 1.6 trillion company from a $ 3.2 trillion company because about a third of its value are tied to products made in China, even if it were to shift some production to other countries.

The Publishing of this Master Essay continues. The World Students Society thanks Tripp Mickle.