Verizon, AT&T will pass Trump’s phone tariffs on to their customers

AT&T and Verizon have announced that they will pass the upcoming smartphone tariffs on to their customers. It means that if you are one of the subscribers of these carriers, then get ready to pay a significantly higher price for a new phone if and when President Trump’s global tariffs kick in.

Verizon CEO confirms that the telco will pass phone tariffs on to its customers

Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg says that it’s hard to predict what will happen, reports Fierce Network. However, the telecom operator will not absorb higher smartphone costs once the additional tariffs by the Trump administration kick in. During the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call, Vestberg stated, “If the tariff is going to be as high as they say on the handset, we’re not planning to cover that in our work.”

It means that if you purchase a new phone from Verizon once Trump’s tariffs go live. Then you may have to bear the extra cost of these tariffs. Notably, the Verizon CEO went on to add that there’s no indication that its consumers are concerned about tariffs. They are even willing to buy phones in advance just to avoid the tariffs.

AT&T will be taking the same road

Similar to Verizon, AT&T will also pass the additional tariff costs on phones to its subscribers. AT&T’s CEO John Stankey stated, “I think that if ultimately costs are passed to us from those that we buy handsets from, unfortunately for the customer, we’re going to have to come up with some new ways for them to figure out how to digest that increase in pricing.”

AT&T consumers will be forced to pay for potential price hikes on smartphones driven by President Trump’s import tariffs. The CEO went on to say, “Handsets are just one part of a broader ecosystem of decisions that consumers are going to have to make on goods and services.”

It’s worth mentioning that US telecom operators are already operating in rough waters. While AT&T gained 324,000 new subscribers in Q1 2025, Verizon lost a massive subscriber base of 289,000. The upcoming Trump tariffs are going to force these telcos and others to operate in much more troubled waters.

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