Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during an event within the Oval Office of the White House on August 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images
Top tech executives are on the forefront of a recent swathe of unprecedented deals with U.S. President Donald Trump.
In only the previous few days, the White House confirmed that two U.S. chipmakers, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, could be allowed to sell advanced chips to China in exchange for the U.S. government receiving a 15% cut of their revenues within the Asian country.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, meanwhile, recently announced plans to extend the firm’s U.S. investment commitment to $600 billion over the subsequent 4 years. The move was widely seen as a bid to get the tech giant out of Trump’s crosshairs on tariffs — and appears to have worked for now.
Altogether, analysts say the deals show just how vital it’s for the world’s largest corporations to search out some tariff relief.
“The flurry of deal-making is an effort to secure lighter treatment from tariffs,” Paolo Pescatore, technology analyst at PP Foresight, told CNBC by email.
“In some shape or form, all the big tech corporations have been negatively impacted by tariffs. They will in poor health afford to fork out on thousands and thousands of dollars in additional fees that can further dent profits as underlined by recent quarterly earnings,” Pescatore said.
While the devil will probably be within the detail of those agreements, Pescatore said that Apple leading the way in which with its accelerated U.S. investment will likely trigger “a domino effect” inside the industry.
Apple, for its part, has long been considered one among the Big Tech firms most vulnerable to simmering trade tensions between the U.S. and China.
Earlier this month, Trump announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, albeit with an exemption for firms which are “constructing in america.”
Apple, which relies on a whole bunch of various chips for its devices and incurred $800 million in tariff costs within the June quarter, is among the many firms exempt from the proposed tariffs.
A ‘hands-on’ approach
The Nvidia and AMD take care of the Trump administration has meanwhile sparked intense debate over the potential impact on the chip giants’ businesses and whether the U.S. government may hunt down similar agreements with other firms.
Some strategists described the arrangement as a “shakedown,” while others suggested it could even be unconstitutional and comparing it to a tax on exports.
White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the legality and mechanics of the 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD were “still being ironed out.” She also hinted deals of this sort could expand to other corporations in future.
Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research, described the Nvidia and AMD deal to pay 15% of China chip sales revenues to the U.S. government as “bizarre.”
Talking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, Wang said what’s “really weird” is there continues to be some uncertainty over whether these chips represent a national security issue.
“If the reply is not any, advantageous OK. The federal government is taking a cut out of it,” Wang said. “Each Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Lisa Su at AMD each decided that OK, we have a option to get our chips into China and perhaps there’s something good coming out of it.”
Investor concerns
While investors initially welcomed the deal as broadly positive for each Nvidia and AMD, which over again secure access to the Chinese market, Wang said some within the industry will nevertheless be concerned.
“As an investor, you are nervous because then, is that this an arbitrary decision by the federal government? Does every president get to play kingmaker when it comes to these deals?” Wang said.
“So, I believe that is really what the priority is, and we still have additional tariffs and trade deals to return from the China negotiations,” he added.
Looking ahead, Dan Niles, founder and portfolio manager at Niles Investment Management, said the query for investors is whether or not the Trump administration’s “hands-on” approach is positive or negative for U.S. corporations.
“I believe for every company, it is extremely different. So, it definitely it’s something I take note of. The larger thing for me is do you’ve got some stability of policy? Do you’ve got a policy one week after which it flips the subsequent?” Niles told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Extra time” on Monday. “Right away, that’s what concerns me a bit bit more.”
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.
