President Donald Trump revealed that he told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he didn’t want Apple to shift production to India from China. Instead, he encouraged him to move production stateside.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.” This comes after Apple reportedly made major plans to shift iPhone manufacturing to India, targeting 60 million units yearly by 2026.
“I said to Tim, I said, ‘Tim look, we treated you really good, we put up with all the plants that you build in China for years, now you got build us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves … we want you to build here,’” Trump added while discussing the matter. He also said India is “one of the highest tariff nations in the world,” adding the country has offered a deal to the U.S. where “they are willing to literally charge us no tariff.” Under the White House’s trade protectionist policies revealed in April, Trump has imposed a so-called reciprocal tariff of 26% on Indian goods, which has been temporarily lowered until July.
READ: Apple turns to India amid tariff pressure on US iPhone manufacturing (April 9, 2025)
Apple has significantly increased its manufacturing presence in India in recent years, primarily assembling iPhones through key partners like Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron. This shift is part of Apple’s strategy to reduce dependency on China, benefiting from India’s lower labor costs and government incentives like the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. iPhones including models like the iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 are produced locally, helping Apple avoid high import duties and cater to the growing Indian market.
While Apple has spent decades building up its supply chain in China, it has looked to other countries like Vietnam, and India to expand its production capacity. Despite Trump’s comments, experts agree that moving production of iPhones to the U.S. would be unlikely because of the final price of the end product. Varying estimates put the cost of an iPhone between $1,500 to $3,500, if it were made in the U.S.