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DOHA/NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he urged Apple to manufacture its products in the United States instead of India, where the US tech giant has said it would be shifting production after US tariffs on China.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook,” Trump said, referring to Apple’s CEO, during a multi-day tour of the Gulf. “I said, Tim, we treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years now.” The president said he told Cook: “We’re not interested in you building in India... we want you to build here and they’re going to be upping their production in the United States.”
Prior to the agreement between Beijing and Washington regarding the agreement to suspend tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days on Monday, Cook said Apple was “not able to precisely estimate the impact of tariffs”. When presenting the tech company’s first-quarter profits in early May, Cook said he expected “a majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin”.
He warned of the uncertain impact of the 145 per cent US tariffs on products from China despite a temporary reprieve for high-end tech goods such as smartphones and computers. Apple expects US tariffs to cost $900 million in the current quarter, even though their impact was “limited” at the start of this year, according to Cook.
New Delhi’s trade gap expands in April, data shows no rush to front-load exports
India, also hit by US tariffs, threatened on Tuesday to take retaliatory measures in response to the increased duties on steel and aluminium. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Thursday trade negotiations between India and the United States are ongoing, and any agreement should be mutually beneficial.
Apple announced in February it would invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years and promised to hire 20,000 people in the country. “Apple’s already in for 500 billion but they’re going to be upping their production, so it’ll be great,” Trump said in Qatar.
India’s merchandise trade deficit was at its widest in five months in April, according to government data released on Thursday, as imports of petroleum products jumped, limiting the impact of an increase in exports to the United States. India’s April trade deficit at $26.42 billion was higher than the $20 billion expected by economists in a Reuters poll, and rose from $21.54 billion in the previous month.
Exports stood at $38.49 billion in April, while imports were $64.91 billion, compared with $41.97 billion of exports and $63.51 billion of imports in March. India’s oil imports rose to $20.72 billion in April from $19 billion in March. Gold imports fell to $3.1 billion in April from $4.4 billion the previous month. The trade deficit was the highest since November 2024.
“The trade deficit is wider than expected, with a surprising increase in oil and electronic goods imports,” said Madhavi Arora, economist at Emkay Global. “It is possible that component imports in the latter category have increased as orders for final exports may be under process and reflect in data in future months.”
Global trade and supply chains have been upended by US President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes on its trading partners.
Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2025
