Apple may have just discovered a new way to finesse President Donald Trump’s trade war: flatter his ego. On Wednesday, Trump said Apple had been granted an exemption from an upcoming 100 percent tariff on semiconductors that could have driven up iPhone prices around the world. The announcement, first reported by Reuters, came the same day Apple announced another $100 billion in U.S. investments and presented Trump with a custom, one-of-a-kind statue.

The statue, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, was made by Corning, an Apple supplier that makes specialty glass for iPhones. Created by a former U.S. Marine Corps corporal who currently works at Apple, the statue was cut from a single piece of glass into a large circular disk with a big, bold Apple logo cut into the center of it. Cook said the piece came from Utah and had a 24-karat gold base engraved with Trump’s name, and Cook added his own finishing touch: a signed note that said “Made in America.”

Trump, who has been egging companies on to manufacture more in the U.S., seemed to take the gift and the gesture in stride. When Cook presented the gift in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump added that Apple—and any company building factories in the U.S.—would see “no charge” when tariffs on semiconductors are eventually implemented. The announcement is a major victory for Apple, which has been in the president’s sights for months over where its supply chain is based.

Apple’s new luck in Washington comes after a rocky spring. In March and April, Trump had been publicly scolding Apple for moving parts of its iPhone production to India, instead of the U.S. In April, he said the tariffs would mean the iPhone of the future would be “Made in America.” By May, Trump was letting his frustration show more publicly: while traveling through the Middle East, he tweeted that he had “a little problem with Tim Cook,” before reportedly telling Cook in a phone call that “We are treating you really good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years. We are not interested in you building in India.”

For its part, analysts have long said it’s not clear how much of the iPhone assembly process Apple could move into the U.S. Trump and his team have pushed back on those assessments. In April, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested Apple could start using “robotic arms” to match the precision of Chinese factories here at home.

Cook’s visit to the Oval Office and his gifts for the president on Wednesday suggested Trump has backed off his demand. Where he once threatened Apple with a 25 percent tariff if it did not make its iPhones in the U.S., Trump now said Wednesday’s move was “a significant step toward the ultimate goal of ensuring that iPhones sold in America also are made in America.” For now, he has backed down from his tariff demand.

Cook has, however, confirmed that some iPhone parts are made in the U.S. already, including semiconductors, glass, and Face ID components. He has not provided a clear timeline for when those products will come together in a U.S.-based assembly plant and has said more vaguely that it will be “for a while.”

Cook has played this game before. In Trump’s first term, Cook has bent to the president’s demands in the name of making larger U.S. investments, all while steering clear of his more direct requests. In 2017, Trump celebrated plans for Apple to build three “big, beautiful” plants in the U.S. But only one was built, and it made face masks instead of Apple products. In 2019, Trump toured an Apple plant in Texas and bragged that it could make iPhones there. Instead, Apple dedicated the facility to MacBook Pro production. In neither case did Apple make moves to produce iPhones in the U.S.

Apple on Wednesday promised $600 billion in U.S. investments over four years. It’s a big number, but to analysts, Reuters reported it may simply reflect what Apple was already going to spend. A similar commitment was made by Apple during the Biden administration, and it was a similar amount that Apple committed to during Trump’s previous term. The Wall Street Journal has reported that, while Apple has been stressing its U.S. investments in recent years, those investments have otherwise proceeded largely as they were before the president took office. In other words, Apple may have promised very little.

Trump has warned that any company that doesn’t make good on such promises may be hit with retroactive tariffs. But so far, Apple has chosen to continue with its pre-Trump business plan: manufacturing iPhones outside the U.S. and maintaining its normal rate of U.S. investments. Tariff calculus has not changed, but the president is, for now, choosing not to force the issue.

Wall Street analysts, for their part, like the way Apple is playing its hand. Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO of Laffer Tengler Investments, a fund that holds Apple stock, told Reuters that the firm’s approach to the president is “a savvy solution to the president’s demand that Apple manufacture all iPhones in the U.S.”

Cook’s personal charm, combined with a few symbolic gestures and some aggressive accounting, has once again helped Apple avoid the trade war. Trump has agreed to frame the positive outcome in terms of “Made in America,” but Apple is likely to continue with most of its manufacturing in Asia for the time being—and has avoided the potential tariffs that Trump has threatened to enforce against other companies.