Newsblog on US politics
Trump threatens Apple with a special customs
Updated on May 23, 2025 – 4:52 p.m.Reading time: 22 min.
Trump is targeting Apple. He also threatens the EU with new tariffs. All developments in the news blog.
The Trump government forbids the renowned US University Harvard to accept foreign students. The university does not want to accept that. Read the whole article here.
US President Donald Trump brought into play on his social media platform Truth Social Customs against Apple-at least 25 percent. With these measures, he wants to prove the company if it does not move its production to the USA. He expects “the iPhones that are sold in the United States of America to be manufactured and built in the United States”.
In response to the high US tariffs against China, Apple initially announced that Apple was moving large parts of his iPhone production to India. At the same time, Apple boss Tim Cook warned that the tariffs could only cause damage of $ 900 billion for the company in the current quarter.
In the first course of Trump’s customs announcements, Apple had escaped the measure. In the meantime, iPhones were excluded from the serves. The US tariffs on goods from China are currently 145 percent.
According to the foreign office, many Germans are currently studying at the US elite university Harvard. One knows about a three -digit number, said a spokesman in Berlin without becoming more specific. He announced quickly discussions with the United States about the effects that would have the announced dismissal of foreigners at the university on German students. One perceives this as an urgent matter and will express the expectation that their concerns and interests are adequately taken into account.
According to the will of the US government, Harvard should no longer be allowed to accept new students from abroad as part of a special federal program. Foreigners already registered would have to switch to other universities – otherwise they will lose their residence status in the United States.
The deputy government spokesman Sebastian Hille said that a free science belongs to the core of liberal societies. “Restrictions on freedom of science are restrictions on democracy itself.”
The Trump government’s foreign policy course is also not without controversy within the US military. The former supreme commander of the US armed forces in Europe, Ben Hodges, criticized the new Ukraine policy of the United States in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper. “After all the loud talk that the problem can be solved in 24 hours, the credibility of this president and this government will be badly damaged by this failure.” Read more about it here.
Ex-health minister and Harvard guest lecturer Karl Lauterbach criticized the US government’s plans to dismiss international students at the elite university. The government’s attacks by US President Donald Trump are “research-political suicide,” said the SPD politician, who has also headed the Bundestag research committee since this week. Read more about it here.
Federal Research Minister Dorothee Bär has concerned the decision of the US government that the renowned Harvard university is no longer allowed to accept foreign students. The CSU politician described the situation on Friday as “highly dramatic”.
Therefore, “now in Germany, but also overall in Europe, one has to focus on the topic of freedom of science … because it is not guaranteed that this is the case everywhere,” she told BR2. Greens boss Franziska Brantner also criticized the government of the government of US President Donald Trump. “It gets dark in the USA. Very dark,” she wrote on Instagram. Therefore, responsibility for free science and teaching in Germany is growing.
