US President Donald Trump said he’s asked Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook to stop building plants in India, taking aim at the iPhone maker’s plans to diversify its manufacturing beyond China.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said of his conversation with the Apple chief executive officer in Qatar, where he’s on a state visit. “He is building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.” As a result of their discussion, Trump said Apple will be “upping their production in the United States.”
India has one of the highest tariff barriers in the world and it’s very hard to sell American products in the planet’s most populous country, Trump said. He said, though, that India has made an offer to drop tariffs on US goods, as the Asian nation seeks an agreement on import taxes.
The US president’s comments throw a wrench into Apple’s plan to import most of the iPhones it sells in the US from India by the end of next year, accelerating a shift beyond China to mitigate risks related to tariffs and geopolitical tensions. Apple makes most of its iPhones in China and has no smartphone production in the US.
Apple and its suppliers have accelerated a pivot away from the world’s No. 2 economy, a process that began when harsh Covid lockdowns hurt production at its largest plant. Tariffs introduced by Trump as well as Beijing-Washington tensions prompted Apple to amplify that effort.
The bulk of India-made iPhones are assembled at Foxconn Technology Group’s factory in southern India. Tata Group’s electronics manufacturing arm, which bought Wistron Corp.’s local business and runs Pegatron Corp.’s operations in India, is also a key supplier. Tata and Foxconn are also building new plants and adding production capacity in southern India, Bloomberg News reported previously.
Apple assembled $22 billion worth of iPhones in India in the 12 months through March, increasing production by nearly 60% over the previous year.
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