New Delhi, May 16, 2025 (ANI): US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he had spoken with the Apple CEO Tim Cook and asked him to limit Apple's expansion in India. Recently, Apple took some steps to expand its iPhone production in India, setting up assembly plants operating in the country. Two of these plants are located in Tamil Nadu, and one is in Karnataka. For these plants Apple has signed contract with manufacturers, such as Foxconn and Tata Group to set up production units. As reported last month, driven by the escalating trade tensions and high reciprocal tariffs announced by both China and US against each other, in a strategic move Apple decided to transition all production of iPhones destined for the US market to India from China. Since then, the US and China have arrived at an agreement that they will withdraw their previously announced reciprocal tariffs and counter tariffs for an initial period of 90 days. The tariffs for 90 days are reduced by 115 per cent, by both US and China against each other. China will impose 10 per cent tariffs on US goods, and the US will tax Chinese goods at about 30 per cent.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00If they decide to manufacture in USA as compared to China, India, Vietnam, a thousand dollar iPhone would start costing three thousand dollar. The question is, are American consumers willing to pay three thousand dollar for that iPhone? That begs the question, where they should manufacture?
00:21Currently in China, 80 percent of Apple's manufacturing happens in China. Apple alone has created five million jobs or supported five million jobs in China. There is so much of concentration on China. They are not the most friendly with each other. That's Beijing and Washington.
00:39Given all of that environment, when Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, announces that he would do some manufacturing in India, all that it would mean is part of the manufacturing, not entire, part of the manufacturing would move away from China to India, which means they are diversifying their supply chain, which means some jobs that are already in China would move to India.
01:03The manufacturing and jobs are not moving away from USA to India. They are moving from China to India, that to part, so that they would have diversified supply chain and American company and consumers are protected, right, from the hegemony of one country that is not most friendly with them in terms of...
01:26The world and India knows that we have to wait for some time before we react to the statements made by USA president. As regards Apple and Tim business here, they have churned out more than 22 billion dollars worth of iPhones from India in the last one year.
01:46Apple have three manufacturing facilities in India and plans for two more. Overall, it will be the commercial judgment of the Apple whether to start manufacturing. They were doing earlier in China. They moved to India partly.
02:07And I think Apple if they move out of India, they will be in big losses because the tariff restrictions are the regulations which are coming up globally are subject to change very frequently.
02:26So we firmly believe as telecom equipment manufacturing association, Apple will not go out of India.