New Delhi: US President Donald Trump Thursday urged Apple to stop building factories in India and re-shore production facilities in America, criticising New Delhi’s “high tariff” and declaring that the South Asian country can “take care of itself”.
The US president referred to a conversation he had had with the CEO of Apple Inc., Tim Cook, saying, “Tim [Cook], you’re my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming in with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India. You can build in India, if you want, to take care of India, because India’s the highest, one of the highest-tariff nations in the world. It’s very hard to sell into India.” Trump made the statement during a state visit to the capital of Qatar, Doha.
India has become an important node for the supply of Apple smartphones to the US. Between April 2024 and February 2025, India exported roughly $8.2 billion worth of smartphones to the US, which is the largest value of goods exported to the North American market, according to data available with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
The American technology company is reportedly planning to make most of its iPhones for the US markets in India by the end of 2026, according to Reuters. The reports come as the US and China imposed higher tariffs on one another. The “trade war” between the world’s two largest economies began with Trump imposing steep tariffs on Beijing earlier this year as part of his strategy to apply reciprocal tariffs against all global economies.
“But I said to Tim [Cook], I said, Tim, look, we’ve treated you good. We’ve put up with all the plants that you built in China for years. Now you’ve got to build us. We’re not interested in your building in India. India can take care of itself,” said Trump in Doha on Apple’s plans to manufacture in India.
The US and China Monday agreed to remove the additional tariffs imposed on each other in April, during talks in Geneva, while promising to “establish” a mechanism to continue discussions around the economy and trade.
A pause on higher tariffs between the two is bound to impact countries looking to benefit from the off-shoring of manufacturing facilities from Beijing to their economies. The impetus for these nations is to strike their trade deals with the US at the earliest.
India is currently negotiating a bilateral trade deal with the US, which was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, D.C. in February 2025. The first tranche is expected to be completed later this year.
Piyush Goyal, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, is set to travel to the US between 17 May and 20 May to continue the talks for a bilateral trade deal at the highest levels, with meetings with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
In Doha, Trump criticised India’s “high tariffs” while commenting on the trade deal currently being negotiated by both countries.
“They’ve [India] offered us a deal where basically, they’re willing to literally charge no tariff. So we go from the highest tariff. You couldn’t do business in India. We’re not even a top 30 in India because the tariff is so high, to a point where they have actually told us, I assume you too, Scott [Besant], you were working on that also, that there will be no tariff,” asserted Trump.
India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar while speaking to domestic media Thursday pointed out that nothing has been “decided” yet and the negotiations are “very intricate”, while confirming that a team from India is heading to the US.
“Any trade deal has to work for both countries, and I think that would be our expectation from the trade deal and until that is done, I think any judgement would be premature,” said Jaishankar.
Trump is on his first international visit to West Asia since re-assuming the Presidency in January. The visit started with Saudi Arabia, from where he travelled to Doha. He is set to leave Qatar Thursday evening and head to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), before returning to the US.
The US president has announced several deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars, including a $142 billion weapons package for Riyadh. In Doha, on Wednesday, Trump met with the new Syrian President, Ahmed al-Shara, who ousted former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, and promised to lift the US sanctions imposed on Damascus over the last decade.
While in Riyadh, Trump spoke about his part in halting military action between India and Pakistan and took credit for the bilateral understanding between the two neighbours.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)
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