Apple stock finally claws back some losses following mixed Trump tariff message

After multiple painful days, Apple stock has finally enjoyed some recovery, finishing the day up after President Trump delivered a mixed message for the iPhone maker on the tariff situation.

Tuesday's stock market activity saw Apple close the day at $172.87, down more than 5%. This gave it a bad starting point for Wednesday, with the prospect of more pain to come.

Following some negative pre-market trading down to around $169, which came back up to $172.18, Apple enjoyed a brief $3 boost at the start of the day.

Even so, Apple was bracing itself for another day of potential turmoil. This was in part due to China deciding to increase its tariffs on U.S. imports into the country, retaliating against increases by the U.S.

Following that auspicious start, Apple's stock continued to hover around the $178 level, before an announcement by President Donald Trump. A 90-day pause on tariffs affecting more than 75 countries will be in place, due to a willingness to negotiate with Trump on the matter.

The pause will also mean that the reciprocal tariff applied to the countries will be set at 10% for the 90-day period.

At the same time, following China's latest retaliatory tariff increase in response to Trump's rise to a 104% rate, the tariff went even higher. Instead, imports from China will be affected by a 125% tariff with immediate effect.

The move was welcomed by the stock market, which saw an immediate jump of 7% on Nasdaq and a 2,000-point surge for the Dow.

An Apple bounce-back

Like the rest of the stock market, Apple saw a massive improvement on its stock price after Trump's announcement. The price quickly rose to a peak of $194.87 by 2 p.m. eastern, with the price hovering around the new level for the rest of the session.

The stock closed at $198.85, up a whopping 15.3% from Tuesday's closing level.

While this is a resurgence of the stock price, it's nowhere near the week-ago level of $223.89 from April 2. That said, it took a week and four trading sessions to reach Tuesday's low point, and it could take a lot longer for Apple to properly recover.

The increase does help the market cap, which is now at $2.99 trillion. This was a bit more than enough to retake the crown of the biggest U.S. company from Microsoft, even though its historic rival also saw its share price and market capitalization surge through the day.

It is very likely that investors are happy to see tariffs in countries other than China being reduced. This is because Apple can use its expanded supply chain outside of China to handle U.S. shipments at a far lower tariff rate than the Chinese equivalents.