UPDATED 15:04 EDT / MAY 15 2025

POLICY

Trump takes issue with Apple’s manufacturing investments in India

U.S. President Donald Trump told Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook that he disapproves of the company’s supply chain buildout in India.

“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,’” Trump recounted today. “We are not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves. They are doing very well. We want you to build here.”

Apple makes most of its consumer devices in China. Over the past few years, the company has shifted some of its iPhone manufacturing capacity to India. Suppliers in India currently assemble an estimated 10% to 15% of Apple’s smartphones, a number that is expected to reach up to 20% by the end of 2025.

It’s believed that the company will continue expanding its manufacturing capacity in the country next year. Last month, a source told Reuters that Apple’s factories in India could make most of the iPhones it sells to U.S. customers by the end of 2026. The company ships more than 60 million iPhones in the U.S. annually.

Key Apple suppliers are also expanding their manufacturing capacity in India. Shortly before Trump detailed his conversation with Tim Cook, India’s government gave Foxconn permission to build a chip plant in Uttar Pradesh. The $433 million facility is expected to process up to 20,000 wafers per month. It will turn those wafers into display drivers, relatively simple chips that computers use to manage their displays. Foxconn, officially Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., assembles most of Apple’s devices. 

“I said to him, ‘My friend, I treated you very good,’” Trump said, referencing his conversation with Cook. “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.”

This past February, Apple announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Part of the capital will go towards the construction of a new artificial intelligence server factory in Texas. The machines made at the plant will power the cloud-hosted components of Apple Intelligence, a set of AI features included in the latest iPhones.

The investment plan will also see the company double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund to $10 billion. The fund helps Apple suppliers upgrade their stateside production lines. In 2021, Apple awarded $410 million to a company called Coherent Corp. to boost the production of optical components for iPhones. 

Photo: Unsplash

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