Axios Closer

April 25, 2025
Friday ✅.
Today's newsletter is 632 words, a 2.5-minute read.
🔔 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.7%.
- Biggest gainer? Charter Communications (+11.4%), the cable and internet provider, exceeded earnings expectations for Q1.
- Biggest decliner? Erie Indemnity (-11.5%), the property and casualty insurer, missed expectations for its Q1 profit.
1 big thing: Apple ramps up India plan
Apple is reportedly moving on a plan to drastically and quickly ramp up iPhone assembly out of India, all but eliminating U.S. imports of the phones from China by the end of 2026.
- The big picture: The move suggests that Apple — whose CEO, Tim Cook, has kept close to President Trump — is not holding its breath for any favorable end to the Trump-China trade war.
Zoom in: Apple sells around 60 million iPhones in the U.S. each year, around 28% of those it produces, according to FT, which first reported the company's plan today.
- Since Covid, Apple had already been beefing up iPhone assembly in India as part of a supply-chain diversification plan, but it still primarily relies on China for output.
- Apple's new plan to pivot harder to India calls for doubling its current output in the country by the end of next year, to 80 million units, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
State of play: Trump's total tariffs on China imports currently add up to 145%, although smartphones had received an exception to the largest slice, the broad reciprocal tariffs announced April 2.
- Flashback: The April 2 announcement had Apple flying planes full of iPhones out of China to the U.S. ahead of the sky-high levies, and consumers rushing to buy them before prices potentially skyrocketed.
The latest: The world's number 1 and 2 economic powers are still engaged in a public standoff on trade, and where tariffs will ultimately land is an unknown.
- A trade agreement with India, meanwhile, could be close. Vice President JD Vance Monday said the two countries "made very good progress" on a deal, and had finalized the "terms of reference" for the talks.
2. Tesla gets an admin boost


Tesla's stock surged today after the Trump administration announced plans for a new autonomous vehicle regulatory framework viewed as favorable to the company.
Why it matters: The Transportation Department's new framework expedites certain crash reporting requirements and expands the types of autonomous vehicles that can be tested on American roadways.
The impact: Tesla shares jumped 9.8% today.
- The stock — which rose 18% over the last five days — also got a boost this week when investors cheered CEO Elon Musk's announcement that he would refocus more of his time on Tesla.
- Despite the recent gains, Tesla shares are still down nearly 30% on the year as the company faces brand damage from the backlash to Musk's role in Washington.
The bottom line: This is one of the first concrete signs that the Trump administration will be friendly to self-driving cars, which Tesla considers core to its future.
3. What else is happening
🔌 BYD soared past Q1 profit expectations. The Chinese EV maker recorded net income of $1.3 billion, more than three times that of rival Tesla. (Bloomberg)
🌯 Deliveroo disclosed a $3.6 billion takeover approach from DoorDash. (Axios)
🪥 Colgate-Palmolive beat quarterly earnings estimates but said it's planning to raise prices to counteract higher costs from tariffs. The company estimated tariffs will add $200 million to its cost of goods sold in 2025. (Reuters)
🇨🇳 China is reportedly considering tariff exemptions on some products. (NYT)
4. 📞 One tech thing: Flippin' smart
The flip phone is getting AI.
State of play: Motorola is introducing new models of its not-dead-even-though-you-could've-sworn-it-was Razr phones with AI capability.
- The Razr — which is really a lineup of foldable smartphones at this point — will have AI features from Motorola itself, as well as Perplexity, Meta, Microsoft and Google.
- The suggested retail price for the basic Razr is $699.99. The Razr Ultra is $1,299.99.
- "Motorola's new flip phones include AI tools that can do things like analyze what's on a phone's screen to provide suggestions and summarize notifications," CNN reports.
💭 Nathan's thought bubble: I'm feeling nostalgic for the good ole days when the flip phone had no intelligence at all.
Today's newsletter was edited by Pete Gannon and copy edited by Carlos Cunha.
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