US President Donald Trump has told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he does not want him “building in India” and that “India can take care of themselves”.
At a business event in Doha, the US President said he had a “little problem” with Tim Cook. “I said to him, my friend, I am treating you very good. You are coming up with $500 billion, but now I hear you are 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 is one of the highest tariff nations in the world, so it is very hard to sell in India,” the US President said.
Trump also claimed that New Delhi has offered a deal to Washington, DC and said it would charge no tariffs on US goods. India has not made any such announcement yet. “They (India) offered us a deal where basically they have agreed to charge us literally no tariffs. I said Tim, we are treating you really good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years. We are not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves,” Trump said.
The US President said Apple, whose iPhones and MacBooks are sought after worldwide, is set to expand its production in the US.
Donald Trump’s nudge to Apple against manufacturing in India comes at a critical time when the iPhone maker is planning to expand its India production and shift its manufacturing away from China to tackle the Trump administration’s tariffs move.
Earlier this month, AFP reported that Tim Cook had said he expected “a majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin”.
Apple currently has three plants in India, two in Tamil Nadu and one in Karnataka. One of these is operated by Foxconn, and the other two by the Tata Group. Two more Apple plants are in the pipeline.
In the last fiscal ending March, Apple had assembled iPhones worth $22 billion in India, a 60 per cent increase in production as compared to the previous financial year.
