Will Trump's Trump Card Deter Apple's Plan For India? Trump's "not happy with building in India" comment comes a day after India approved a $435 million Foxconn project with tech giant HCL, which will manufacture Foxconn's display driver chips, used in consumer electronics, especially iPhones

India's ambition to become an iPhone manufacturing hub is in the ire of US President Donald Trump. Speaking at a business event in Doha, Trump mentioned he told Apple CEO Tim Cook to stop producing iPhones in India. "My friend, I treated you very good…but now I hear you're building all over India…I don't want you building in India," the US President told Cook. Trump added that India has one of the highest tariff barriers in the world, and it's very hard to sell American products in the country. Even as the Indian government has "offered us a deal where basically they are willing to literally charge us no tariff", it seeks an agreement on import taxes, the US president claimed. As Apple ramps up iPhone assembly and expands its supply chain footprint in India, will this jeopardize Cook's plan for the market? Maybe not.

"Every government would like to bring manufacturing locally to their country. However, Apple has more than 1,000 components going into an iPhone and it took almost a decade for Apple to build such a complex and high quality supply chain. And, it has been more than five years in India for Apple to reach some form of capacity and still far away from building a well-oiled supply chain like China. If not China for US bound iPhones, then India remains the only potential manufacturing destination for Apple as the ecosystem is mushrooming aided by lower cost English speaking skilled labour, world class software talent, favourable government policies such as PLI and a huge domestic consumption market," said Neil Shah, industry analyst & co-founder at Counterpoint Research.

"Further, reading between the lines, US's request to Apple could also be a way to gain leverage against India in negotiations as they understand India needs "halo" companies such as Apple to attract and develop a robust domestic supplier ecosystem. So this statement won't affect Apple's plans which are already in motion with India in the driver's seat as a potential alternative destination to China," Shah added.

Earlier, Apple had made announcements to invest $500 billion in the US in the next four years that would include a giant factory in Texas for artificial intelligence servers and add about 20,000 research and development jobs across the country. The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt believed Apple's $500 billion investment, as well as increasing import costs sparked by his trade tariffs, would encourage the company to ramp up manufacturing in the US. However, Apple has maintained this as a non-starter.

Tariffs drove a shift in the country-of-origin mix away from China in Q1 2025 with a strong uptick in shipments from India in March. The biggest manufacturer of iPhones is China, where Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, is Apple's primary contract manufacturer. With the tariff war on, Apple looks to reduce its dependence on China and divert its ecosystem into India.

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, 81.9 percent of iPhones exported from India between December 2024 and February 2025 were shipped to the U.S. In March 2025, that figure jumped to 97.6 percent following a 219 percent jump in exports – a result of Apple expediting shipments ahead of expected U.S. tariffs. Furthermore, ahead of the Trump administration announcing a raft of tariffs on April 2, smartphone shipments surged 30 percent YoY in March as OEMs across the board raced to bring inventory into the country to beat these tariffs.

Earlier this month, Tim Cook said the company would start importing iPhones manufactured in India to meet the majority of US demand. Trump's comments come a day after India approved a $435 million Foxconn project with tech giant HCL, which will manufacture Foxconn's display driver chips, used in consumer electronics, especially iPhones.