No he cannot. He would be immediately removed at CEO and replaced with someone who played ball.
Remember, Apple is a publicly traded company. What you're suggesting is, at a whim, Tim Cook could just completely tank the company. China has far, far more leverage over Apple than Apple has over them plus it's a huge market they're making progress in.
Sure he can. Google bailed on China once. Apple certainly has the money and talent to do the same.
He would be immediately removed at CEO and replaced with someone who played ball.
Would he? Why do you assume that this would be bad for it share price, or that the majority of shareholders would be against it?
Google didn't have much of any foothold into China when it dropped. It was also purely based on software which can be toggled off relatively easy (then you just have to wind down offices).
All of Apple's products require China to produce. All of them.
> Would he? Why do you assume that this would be bad for it share price, or that the majority of shareholders would be against it?
The majority of their manufacturing and assembly is in China. China is their big growth market. Not only would it tank the share price by cutting out their huge growth opportunity but it's completely within China's power to stop almost all of their production.
The stock market reflects what wallstreet things will grow. When you stagnate your share price drops (there is no reason to hang onto it if you won't become more profitable).
Today. But maybe not tomorrow. India, Vietnam, Brazil, and a dozen other countries are more than willing to take on that production. Heck, most of Apple's contractors in China (think Foxconn) already have manufacturing in other countries.
That isn't an easy thing to do and it certainly wouldn't give Tim Cook any leverage. It would take them probably a decade to fully move their pipeline out of China and even if they did it, it would be very capital intensive so even if it was cheaper it would take quite some time to recoup those costs (and I'm not really convinced it would be cheaper overall but that's a separate exercise).