Customers of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon be warned: price rises are coming.
Bosses of the three biggest US carriers have all said prices will rise as President Donald Trump's latest tariff plans ripple through the smartphone industry.
Trump has placed a 145 percent tariff on imports from China, the country where iPhones are primarily assembled. Smartphones have been exempted from tariffs temporarily, but that is not expected to last. Even if they get a longer term reprieve, the broader impact on supply chains is significant.
Apple has already responded by announcing it will shift iPhone production to India by 2026 to reduce dependence on China.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg has made clear that if Trump's proposed tariffs spike phone prices, the carrier won't be eating the cost — it'll be passing it on to customers.
'I the tariff is going to be as high as they say on the handsets, we are not planning to cover that,' he said last week.Last week, it emerged Verizon lost customers in droves after quietly raising prices and scaling back deals.
The carrier lost 289,000 monthly subscribers within the first three months of this year.
Trump's tariffs have hugely reshaped the economic landscape since he was reelected last year.
AT&T CEO John Stankey echoed that view. 'If tariffs are the next driver of an increase in the unit cost of handsets... that cost is going to be... largely moving it through to the end user,' he told Yahoo Finance.