Jim Cramer Says Washington Doesn't 'Care' About Apple (AAPL) $500 Billion Investment, Services Jobs

We recently published a list of Top 10 Stocks to Watch as Investors Brace for Recession. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other top stocks to watch as investors brace for recession.

Despite some optimism in the market after President Donald Trump’s indication of possible talks with China, Wall Street analysts are warning about recession risks due to the impending impact of tariffs and an overall decline in consumer sentiment.

Adam Parker, Trivariate Research CEO, said in a recent interview with CNBC that it’s “hard” to be bullish in this market because the impact of tariffs is yet to be reflected in companies’ earnings.

Parker thinks that in the coming days, earnings reports of many companies will begin to show that we are indeed facing an economic slowdown:

“You know there’s a difference between a growth scare and and then an actual growth slowdown I think in this case it is a growth slowdown I don’t know how much of it is yet and that’s where I think the challenge is but you can’t just say oh it’s an irrational growth scare that everyone has and it’s like an uncertain I think if you have a business with pricing power if you have a business that you know you can be okay. But there’s a lot of economically sensitive businesses we’re going to hear from next week and the week after if you think about how earning season typically unfolds where we may get guidance that isn’t quite as peachy as we’ve seen from you know the original guys in the banks and then some of the higher quality tech companies have reported.”

READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In.

For this article, we picked 10 stocks Wall Street is currently buzzing about. With each company, we have mentioned its hedge fund sentiment. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 158

Jim Cramer in a latest program on CNBC said that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has created “millions” of services jobs and invested heavily in the US. However, President Donald Trump’s tariffs are impacting the company and the government is not paying attention to the iPhone maker’s contributions:

“Apple’s done so much to create new jobs in this country, but there are not many manufacturing jobs, although they have partnered with other companies to do a lot of manufacturing here. Instead, Apple creates service jobs, especially in software — millions of them. That’s a pillar of our economy. But for whatever reason, nobody in Washington seems to care that much about protecting the all-important service sector. Bizarrely, with this administration, service jobs don’t seem to count. So when Trump comes back in and starts talking tariffs, Apple knows it’s a jam. They commit to doing more than $500 billion worth of investments in this country over the next four years. Could there be a quid pro quo? Does Apple get anything for that 500 billion? Yes. It gets a real expensive country to do business in, with not enough engineers to go around because our country doesn’t produce a lot of them.”

In February, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the US over the next four years.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is desperately in need of new catalysts. The company’s revenue in China fell 8% in fiscal year 2024, following a 2% decline the previous year. The Chinese market accounts for about 15% of Apple’s total revenue, so this downtrend cannot be ignored.

Investors had hopes from the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment, but so far, its performance has been weak. Vision Pro faces tough competition from Meta’s $500 Quest and the more affordable Quest 3S, making it hard to justify its $3,500 price tag. The failure of Apple’s HomePod, unable to compete with Amazon’s and Google’s lower-priced offerings, further highlights the challenges in this market.

Apple’s iPhone 16 has not shown promising growth prospects yet, and investors are still in a wait-and-see mode on the AI platform.

Overall, AAPL ranks 3rd on our list of top stocks to watch as investors brace for recession. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.