China ‘may exempt some US goods’ from tariffs, cheering markets – business live

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The US-China trade conflict is forcing companies to rethink their supply chains.

Apple, for example, is reportedly pivoting away from China, which would be a major change to its supply chain.

Apple has in recent years been steadily building capacity in India with contract manufacturers Tata Electronics and Foxconn, though it still assembles most of its smartphones in China.

iPhone assembly is the last step in the production process, bringing together hundreds of components for which Apple is still heavily reliant on Chinese suppliers.

Yesterday allowed global risk investors to take a deeper breath. Dovish comments from Federal Reserve (Fed) members, and de-escalation of trade tensions between the US and China allowed a further recovery in global equities.

Optimism was backed today by the Chinese announcement that it is considering easing tariffs on some US imports, further signalling de-escalation of trade tensions and supporting earlier comments from the Trump administration that triple-digit tariffs could come ‘substantially’ down.