But on “Liberation Day,” Mr. Trump said he was doing the opposite, announcing new tariffs of 27% on India, 36% on Thailand, 24% on Malaysia, and 46% on Vietnam. After convulsions in the financial markets, Mr. Trump suspended those levies for three months, though what he’ll do next is anyone’s guess, and this isn’t the certainty companies need while deciding where to source, or re-source, products.

Apple makes iPads and watches in Vietnam. Since 2018, when Mr. Trump first put tariffs on China during his first term, annual U.S. imports of goods from Vietnam have increased 178% in nominal dollars, from $49 billion to $137 billion last year. Some in the White House find such figures disappointing, since they want everything made in the U.S.

That includes, by the way, smartphones. “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said soon after Liberation Day. “It’s going to be automated.” Mr. Lutnick added that the result would be “the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America, to work on these high-tech factories.”

Mr. Lutnick is behind the times since iPhone production in Asia long ago was automated far beyond people turning screws. He also misses that returning iPhone assembly to the U.S. would mean that smartphones would be far more expensive given relative production costs. There’s also the problem of finding workers, since the U.S. had some 482,000 open manufacturing jobs in February.

Apple has good reason beyond tariffs to move its supply chains out of China, given geopolitical tensions. But forcing the company to make iPhones in the U.S. is a losing game that would hurt Apple and its customers.