Featured Insights

Audit committees have long been the mandated nexus of corporate financial reporting, internal controls, and risk management. Even though these committees face a full slate of topical oversight and compliance – financial, internal audit, AI, cyber, ESG, Sustainability, DEI – 2025 has also brought forward a new suite of risks. Namely, trade and tariffs, and geopolitical conflict. With so much responsibility across a broad spectrum of issues, have audit committees become the “kitchen sink” of corporate boards?

Central to the health of the domestic and global economy, business executives have a responsibility to understand the dynamic energy landscape both in the U.S. and globally. 2025 will bring tensions of oversupply, price increases, deregulation, and restructured incentives for renewables. This will lay on top of an already complex web of geopolitical conflict, tariffs, trade restrictions, export bans, and more. With the climate crisis intensifying, an increased focus for all corporates should be on decarbonization, energy security, and system resilience. Perhaps most succinctly put, the headline on energy in 2025 is that there is no easy headline.

With the U.S.-China trade simmering as Trump begins his second term, Apple will be vulnerable to the proposed China tariffs and export restrictions of critical minerals. Since Apple makes majority of its +100 products in China, it must deflect what otherwise would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Although Apple has shifted some production to India with the iPhone 15 (2022), Apple has yet to start fabrication in the U.S. With Trump proposing a 60% tariff on goods imported from China and a 20% levy on things made elsewhere, Apple will have to use every lever to contain costs, sustain demand, secure mineral inputs, and gain policy exemption. So, with so much at-stake, what will Apple do?