President Donald Trump implored Apple boss Tim Cook to build phones in the United States rather than in India.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said at a press conference in Qatar on Thursday. “I said to him, ‘You’re my friend, I’ve treated you very good… but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”
Apple had planned to import most of its iPhones for sale in the U.S. from India within the next 18 months as part of an accelerated move away from manufacturing in China to avoid tariffs and escalating tensions between Washington, D.C., and Beijing.
Trump’s insistence that Apple manufacture its products on American territory might not be realistic, however. The company has said in the past that the U.S. does not have the quantity of skilled technical engineers necessary to manufacture Apple products at scale. A move home would also face other logistical barriers such as the need to build a new supply chain, and the high cost of U.S. labor.
India’s factories currently manufacture about 20 percent of Apple’s annual production, equivalent to more than 40 million units.
Trump said that number was fine, provided the products are being sold in India. “You can build in India if you want, to take care of India,” he said.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
The president, who is in Qatar for a state visit, announced Thursday that India has offered the U.S. a trade deal with “no tariffs.”
The country has sought to agree a deal with its largest trading partner, the U.S., before the end of a 90-day freeze on so-called reciprocal tariffs, including a 26 percent levy on India, announced by the president in early April.
In March, Apple evacuated $2 billion worth of products, roughly 1.5 billion iPhones weighing 600 tons, from China to India to avoid tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
Earlier this year the tech giant pledged a $500 billion investment in the domestic market that included opening a new server factory in Texas and hiring 20,000 new U.S. employees before 2029.
Trump, writing on Truth Social at the time, thanked Cook for the investment and claimed his aggressive policies had caused the move.
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