By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has been predicting its barrage of tariffs targeting China will push Apple into manufacturing the iPhone in the United States for the first time.

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But that’s an unlikely scenario even with U.S tariffs now standing at 145% on products made in China — the country where Apple has manufactured most of its iPhones since the first model hit the market 18 years ago.

The disincentives for Apple shifting its production domestically include a complex supply chain that it began building in China during the 1990s. It would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.S., and then confront Apple with economic forces that could triple the price of an iPhone, threatening to torpedo sales of its marquee product.

“The concept of making iPhones in the U.S. is a non-starter,” asserted Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, reflecting a widely held view in the investment community that tracks Apple’s every move. He estimated that the current $1,000 price tag for an iPhone made in China, or India, would soar to more than $3,000 if production shifted to the U.S. And he believes that moving production domestically likely couldn’t be done until, at the earliest, 2028. “Price points would move so dramatically, it’s hard to comprehend.”

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The Cupertino, California, company has yet to publicly discuss its response to Trump’s tariffs on China, but the topic may come up on May 1 when Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to field questions from analysts during a quarterly conference call to discuss the company’s financial results and strategy.

And there is no doubt the China tariffs will be a hot-button issue given Apple’s stock price has dropped by nearly 20% and lowered the company’s market value by $600 billion since Trump began increasing them on April 2.

If the tariffs hold, Apple is widely expected to eventually raise the prices on iPhones and other popular products because the Silicon Valley’s supply chain is so heavily concentrated in China, India and other overseas markets caught in the crossfire of the escalating trade war.

The big question is how long Apple might be willing to hold the line on its current prices before the tariffs’ toll on the company’s profit margins become too much to bear and consumers are asked to shoulder some of the burden.

One of the main reasons that Apple has wiggle room to hold the line on its current iPhone pricing while the China tariffs remain in place is because the company continues to reap huge profit margins from the revenue generated by the subscriptions and other services tied to its product, said Forrester Research analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. That division, which collected $96 billion in revenue during Apple’s last fiscal year, remains untouched by Trump’s tariffs.

“Apple can absorb some of the tariff-induced cost increases without significant financial impact, at least in the short term,” Chatterjee said.

Apple tried to appease Trump in February by announcing plans to spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the U.S. through 2028, but none of it was tied to making an iPhone domestically. Instead, Apple pledged to fund a Houston data center for computer servers powering artificial intelligence — a technology the company is expanding into as part of an industrywide craze.

When asked this week about whether Trump believes Apple intends to build iPhones in the U.S., White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt pointed to Apple’s investment promise as evidence that the company thinks it could be done. “If Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” Leavitt said.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also predicted tariffs would force a manufacturing shift during an April 6 appearance on a CBS news program. “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,” Lutnick said.

But during a 2017 appearance at a conference in China, Cook expressed doubt about whether the U.S. labor pool had enough workers with the vocational skills required to do the painstaking and tedious work that Lutnick was discussing.

“In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” Cook said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

Trump also tried to pressure Apple, to no avail, into shifting iPhone production to the U.S. during his first term as president. But the administration ultimately exempted the iPhone from the tariffs he imposed on China back then — a period when Apple had announced a commitment to invest $350 billion in the U.S. Trump’s first-term tariffs on China also prompted Apple to begin a process that led to some of its current iPhones being made in India and some of its other products being manufactured in Vietnam.

Cook also took the president on a 2019 tour of a Texas plant where Apple had been assembling some of its Mac computers since 2013. Shortly after finishing that our, Trump took credit for the plant that Apple had opened while Barack Obama was president. “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America,” Trump posted on Nov. 19, 2019.

By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A new executive order from President Donald Trump that’s part of his effort to invigorate energy production raises the possibility that his Department of Justice will go to court against state climate change laws aimed at slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels.

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Trump’s order, signed Tuesday, comes as U.S. electricity demand ramps up to meet the growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications, as well as federal efforts to expand high-tech manufacturing. It also coincides with “climate superfund” legislation gaining traction in various states.

Trump has declared a “ national energy emergency ” and ordered his attorney general to take action against states that may be illegally overreaching their authority in how they regulate energy development.

“American energy dominance is threatened when State and local governments seek to regulate energy beyond their constitutional or statutory authorities,” Trump said in the order.

He said the attorney general should focus on state laws targeting climate change, a broad order that unmistakably puts liberal states in the crosshairs of Trump’s Department of Justice.

Michael Gerrard, director of the Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said it would be an “extraordinarily bold move” for the federal government to go to court to try to overturn a state climate law.

Gerrard said the quickest path for Trump’s Department of Justice is to try to join ongoing lawsuits where courts are deciding whether states or cities are exceeding their authority by trying to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for the cost of damages from climate change.

Democrats say they won’t back down

Democratic governors vowed to keep fighting climate change.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Trump of “turning back the clock” on the climate and said his state’s efforts to reduce pollution “won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.”

The group Climate Mayors, which includes the mayors of America’s biggest cities, said in a statement from its chair, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, that the federal government is overreaching its authority and ignoring the “enormous costs of continued environmental destruction and the political and social harm of retreating American leadership.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, cochairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which includes 22 governors, said they “will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis.”

Climate superfund laws are gaining traction

Vermont and New York are currently fighting challenges in federal courts to climate superfund laws passed last year. Trump suggested the laws “extort” payments from energy companies and “threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”

Both are modeled on the 45-year-old federal superfund law, which taxed petroleum and chemical companies to pay to clean up of sites polluted by toxic waste. In similar fashion, the state climate laws are designed to force major fossil fuel companies to pay into state-based funds based on their past greenhouse gas emissions.

Several other Democratic-controlled states, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and California, are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and natural gas industries, applauded Trump’s order that it said would “protect American energy from so-called ‘climate superfunds.’”

“Directing the Department of Justice to address this state overreach will help restore the rule of law and ensure activist-driven campaigns do not stand in the way of ensuring the nation has access to an affordable and reliable energy supply,” it said.

Court battles are already ongoing

The American Petroleum Institute, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed the lawsuit against Vermont. The lawsuit against New York was filed by West Virginia, along with several coal, gas and oil interests and 21 other mostly Republican-led states, including Texas, Ohio and Georgia.

Make Polluters Pay, a coalition of consumer and anti-fossil fuel groups, vowed to fight Trump’s order and accused fossil fuel billionaires of convincing Trump to launch an assault on states.

The order, it said, demonstrates the “corporate capture of government” and “weaponizes the Justice Department against states that dare to make polluters pay for climate damage.”

Separately, the Department of Justice could join lawsuits in defense of fossil fuel industries being sued, Gerrard said.

Those lawsuits include ones filed by Honolulu, Hawaii, and dozens of cities and states seeking billions of dollars in damages from things like wildfires, rising sea levels and severe storms.

In the last three months, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to get involved in a couple climate-themed lawsuits.

One was brought by oil and gas companies asking it to block Honolulu’s lawsuit. Another was brought by Alabama and Republican attorneys general in 18 other states aimed at blocking lawsuits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states, including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Trump’s order set off talk in state Capitols around the U.S.

That includes Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is contesting a court challenge to a regulation that would make it the first major fossil fuel-producing state to force power plant owners pay for greenhouse gas emissions.

John Quigley, a former Pennsylvania environmental protection secretary and a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, wondered if the Department of Justice would begin challenging all sorts of state water and air pollution laws.

“This kind of an order knows no bounds,” Quigley said. “It’s hard to say where this could end up.”

Associated Press reporter Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN, AP Science Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — There’s a micromoon coming up.

The full moon will look slightly smaller and dimmer on Saturday night. But the change may be tricky to spot with the naked eye.

“It’s a very subtle difference,” said astrophysicist Alain Brizard from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont.

The phenomenon happens when the moon is at a point farthest away from Earth. It’s opposite to a supermoon, where the moon swings closer to Earth and looks a bit larger.

To see the micromoon, go outside and look up in an area with a clear view of the moon.

Supermoons and micromoons happen a few times a year as the moon’s full phase syncs up with its orbit.

Another micromoon is on tap for May. Three supermoons will be visible this year in October, November and December.

A more colorful lunar event took place in March when a total eclipse turned the moon coppery red.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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When Argentine attacking midfielder Joaquin Pereyra arrived in St. Paul last September, his new club was making almost immediate calls for patience.

But even in building out a longer runway for Pereyra to take off in a new league and country, Minnesota United could have reasonably expected more than they got from Pereyra’s first stint, when he logged one assist and no goals in 588 minutes across the regular season and playoffs.

Pereyra, in fact, didn’t even play a full 90 minutes across 10 total matches in 2024.

That’s just not good enough considering Pereyra joined MNUFC as one of the club’s three Designated Players during last year’s summer transfer window. The Loons paid Tucuman, a club in Argentine’s top flight, a transfer fee of approximately $3 million, and the 25-year-old is the team’s third-highest paid player at nearly $700,000 in guaranteed compensation, according to the MLS Players Association.

Pereyra cost more than a diamond, but MNUFC wasn’t expecting him to sparkle — at least not in first light. That is starting to come this spring.

With a pair of assists in United’s 2-1 win at New York City on Sunday, Pereyra has four primary assists in 461 total minutes, one behind a trio of MLS leaders — Miami’s Luis Suarez, San Jose’s Cristian Espinoza and Charlotte’s Pep Biel.

Instead of answering questions about why he took Pereyra off the field in the second half, head coach Eric Ramsay was pumping up Pereyra after his second 90-minute shift this season in the Loons’ 2-1 victory at New York City last Sunday.

“He has evolved hugely in his time with us here,” Ramsay told reporters from Yankee Stadium. “He is a very complete player now, I would say, and you could see in his performance, which was very dogged. He showed real aggression, a real willingness to stick to a game plan and level of discipline.

“He had some hard running, but he also had some great moments on the ball, and that’s what we expect of him because he is a good player.”

Pereyra has notched all four assists over the past four games.

“I feel better, obviously. Much better than last season, like it happens with everyone, everywhere,” Pereyra said in Spanish via a club translator. “It took me a while to adapt to the league, but now I’m more comfortable than I’ve been here in a long time. I feel very good. I feel calm. And obviously, with the team, we’re trying to consolidate ourselves again to compete in the (league).”

Pereyra’s assist on Tani Oluwaseyi’s second goal against Real Salt Lake was his best yet in a Loons shirt. With his weaker right foot, Pereyra hit a long ball over the top to uncork a counter attack. Oluwaseyi sprinted underneath it and scored in the 55th minute.

Oluwaseyi called the pass “incredible,” and Pereyra’s service has helped the Canadian forward move into a second-place tie for goals scored (five) this season.

“I think we saw that quality early last year, and I think we’ve all been waiting for him to show it in games,” Oluwaseyi said after the RSL win. “You can see now, game in and game out, he’s just been performing. He’s been one of our best players all year and makes my life easier and creates more chances for me and Kelvin (Yeboah). So, we’re just happy he’s finally finding his stride.”

When Pereyra arrived last year, Ramsay said his biggest improvement needed to come on the defensive side. That, too, has transpired.

“Without the ball, I’ve got to say, in his time here, he’s really improved,” Ramsay said after RSL. “In that sense, he’s really reliable. He’s very competitive, very aggressive.”

When Ramsay subbed out Pereyra against RSL — his yellow-card booking was a catalyst for the change, Ramsay emphasized — Pereyra was not pleased.

“He didn’t want to come off on 65 minutes, and that is a sign of a player that smells blood, feels like he’s in a really good vein of form and had really good rhythm,” Ramsay said. “And it was a shame we had to disrupt that, but I think justified, all in all.”

Pereyra is still waiting to open up his goal-scoring account in MLS. It looks closer: he has 1.4 expected goals this season, compared to 0.5 last season.

“Obviously, it would be a good thing,” Pereyra said. “… I’m at a point where I feel very good, physically fit, and I can help the team from my position. And, well, the goal will come when it has to. But … I’m not desperate. I’m calm.”