‘India can take care of themselves’: Trump urges Apple CEO Tim Cook to keep iPhone production in US

US President Donald Trump on Thursday (May 15) said that he asked Apple CEO Tim Cook not to build its products in India, urging him to focus on manufacturing in the United States.

“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. Referring to the $500 billion investment in the US announced by Apple in February, he added, “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.”

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As Apple aims to reduce its reliance on China, where about 90 per cent of its flagship smartphones are assembled, it has made efforts to ramp up production in India, seeking to make around 25 per cent of global iPhones in the country in the next few years.

Last month, Reuters reported that Apple is aiming to make most of its iPhones sold in the United States at factories in India by the end of 2026, and is speeding up those plans to navigate potentially higher tariffs in China. The US tech giant was holding urgent talks with contract manufacturers Foxconn and Tata to achieve that goal, it added.

“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’,” the US president said.

Trump added that the tech giant will be “upping their production in the United States”.

Trump claims India proposing ‘zero tariff’ deal

Trump made the comments while discussing Washington’s trade relations with New Delhi. He said that India is “one of the highest tariff nations in the world,” adding that it is hard to sell American products in the country.

Speaking at a business event in Qatar, the US president claimed that India is proposing a trade agreement with “no tariffs” or “zero tariffs”. India is “willing to literally charge us no tariff,” said Trump.

Trump’s comments come days after he claimed that he used trade as a bargaining chip to broker a ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan to end their military actions. However, India has maintained that it was a “bilateral” agreement between the two nations, dismissing Trump’s claims.

Trump had earlier threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on India in response to heavy US duties on steel and aluminium.

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