Throughout the modern era, Apple has been hailed as a titan of industry and a paragon of American excellence and success.
For example, the legendary investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, has repeatedly praised Apple and recently stated that "Apple is different than the other businesses we own. It just happens to be a better business."
But the tech giant has had a rough spring.
Over the course of mere weeks, Apple came up short on its software promises and confronted supply chain and hardware setbacks, thanks to the US’s blossoming trade war with Canada.
Apple failed to deliver numerous vital software updates for Siri and to effectively synthesize it with Apple Intelligence. Incredibly, Siri’s promised software updates and upgrades are already almost a year overdue, and they’re essential to bringing Siri up to date in our modern, AI-centric market.
According to Apple’s senior director of Siri and Information Intelligence, there’s no guarantee the missing features will arrive this year.
Apple’s apparent inability to marry Siri with Apple Intelligence has obliterated the relationship between Apple’s marketing division and its Siri and Information Intelligence unit — with the former pushing to market features that are “nowhere near ready.” Even Senior Director Walker has been forced to concede that the various delays and failures that have afflicted Siri have mired Apple and its staff in “an ugly situation.”
Meanwhile, the U.S.’s escalating trade war with Canada is only making the situation worse, imploding Apple's supply chain and severely jeopardizing all of its steadfast efforts over the past decade to become carbon-neutral by 2030.
For years, Apple has relied upon aluminum from Elysis, a revolutionary technology company and aluminum supplier located in Canada, in order to produce various Apple products, such as the iPhone SE and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Furthermore, due to the fact that Elysis is able to produce aluminum via a revolutionary and proprietary carbon-free smelting technology, Apple has invested millions of dollars into Elysis since 2018 alone, in an effort to bolster its research and capacity to produce environmentally-friendly aluminum. In fact, aluminum from Elysis has rapidly become an essential aspect of Apple’s official plan to emphatically reduce its carbon footprint and become carbon-neutral by 2030.
Unfortunately, on March 10th 2025, as a part of Ontario’s retaliatory measures to US tariffs on Canada, Premier Doug Ford applied a 25 percent surcharge on all electricity exports to the United States. In response, President Trump immediately retaliated by increasing the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum by 25%, which has severely hindered Apple’s ability to source sustainable aluminum.
Moreover, Apple’s aluminum needs simply cannot be met by the USA’s own domestic aluminum production, which produces a paltry 710,000 tonnes of aluminum, compared to Canada’s 3,000,000. As Dominic Lemieux, the Director of Canada’s Syndicat des Métallos/Metalworkers Union, notes, “Americans are going to continue to consume aluminum in many sectors, including defence, but they don’t have the capacity to support their own industry.”
Apple has been a titan of the modern economy, but these recent setbacks are serious. Apple’s stock has plunged 18% from its record close in December as a result of its various internal failures and Trumps’ tariffs on Canada.
If Trump’s trade war with Canada continues to endure, Apple’s collapsed supply chain and inability to modernize Siri and deliver a competitive AI could bring the tech giant to its knees and inevitably force it to abandon its carbon-neutral aspirations.
