Trump says he has a problem with Apple making products in India

US President Donald Trump on Thursday told Apple not to make its products in India while speaking from Doha in Qatar.

In remarks made publicly Trump said that, “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I said, ‘Tim you’re my friend, I’ve treated you very good, you’re coming here (in the US) with a $500 billion announcement, and now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.”

He went on to add that, “You can build in India if you want to take care of India, because India is one of the highest tariff nations in the world.”

Trump noted that India had offered a trade deal to India with virtually no tariffs on American goods. While India and the US are engaged in trade talks, a trade agreement is yet to be finalised by the two countries.

His remarks against India were in contrast to his approach with China. Trump had ramped up tariffs and counter-tariffs on China to the point where they were 145% by 11^th April. China, in turn, had imposed tariffs on US goods up to 125% for goods entering China. In this tit-for-tat game China played cool. On Monday, the two sides came to an agreement by which tariffs for goods from China would fall to 30%, down from 145%, for the next 90 days. China also agreed to slash tariffs for US products from 125% to 10%.

These series of flip flops by Trump since 2nd April, when he announced the so-called “liberation day,” has injected great uncertainty into global trade.

For its part, Apple began diversifying away from China to India to overcome these uncertainties until Trump began targeting India as well. His goal is to get Apple back in the US to manufacture its products there. Trump’s approach has been to marry “industrial policy” with his tariff policy to ensure that manufacturing returns to the US. This is a goal that many trade economists as well as industrial experts have said is easier said than done. For one, Apple’s supply chains for almost all the parts of its flagship iPhones, laptops and other products are located in Asia.

India has wooed Apple and other manufacturers to locate production to India and in the coming years it is expected that a quarter of all the phones that Apple manufactures will be made in India. India’s Production Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme has sought to encourage investment in key industrial sectors. By late 2024, investments around $18.7 billion had been undertaken leading to production of goods valued at $163 billion.

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