Amid supply chain difficulties stemming from China's zero-COVID policy, Foxconn's founder reportedly urged Chinese leaders to ease some of the country's guidelines.

Video Transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: Let's check on shares of Apple now. They are up, as you can see, just about 1%. Still down, though, more than 20% this year, largely on production issues related to China COVID lockdowns, speaking of. And there are some fascinating news on that front, from the Wall Street Journal. The company is not only the most valuable in the world, it's apparently equally influential. A letter from the founder of Foxconn, the world's largest iPhone maker, played a role in persuading the Chinese government to loosen its COVID-zero policy.

Terry Gu warning a month ago that the country's strict controls could threaten its position in the global supply chain. Recent worker protests at the Foxconn factory in zhengzhou may have lit the fuse for those protests that spread around the entire country, and then some, in fact, in the extreme cases, even called for President Xi Jinping to resign. This is some really intriguing commentary from the Wall Street Journal that you don't expect either side to comment on, needless to say, but speaks to the massive influence of these phones that we keep in our hands all day.

SEANA SMITH: It certainly does. And I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Foxconn's founder might have reportedly got involved in this because we already heard that Apple is starting to shift its production elsewhere out of China. A number of large US companies have been affected by the lockdowns in China in terms of their supply, Nike being one of them. Adidas, Volkswagen, Samsung, just some of those companies that have had their supply disrupted over the last two years because of China's zero-COVID policy.

It's interesting, though, just, when you take a step back, exactly what you're saying, Dave, the influence of one person and one device, more specifically, and what that would mean for a nation of millions and millions and millions of people.