Tech Giant Apple rejects Trump’s call to halt India manufacturing, reaffirms commitment to ‘Make in India’ push.
US President Donald Trump publicly admonished Apple CEO Tim Cook, urging the tech giant to halt its rapidly growing iPhone production in India. This unprecedented public rebuke of a top US corporation for expanding in India has rattled US-India trade watchers, stirred political tensions, and cast a spotlight on Apple’s tightly guarded “China+1” pivot to India.
But despite the rhetoric, Apple is not budging. On the contrary, sources within the company have told Indian officials in no uncertain terms that their expansion in India is non-negotiable. With $22 billion worth of iPhones produced in India in FY25, the country has firmly embedded itself in Apple’s global supply chain — a shift too big to reverse.
The remarks have led to immediate concerns in New Delhi. Yet, the Indian government has responded with calm confidence, even as it reached out directly to Apple following Trump’s comments.
Since 2017, when Apple first began assembling the iPhone SE in India, its journey has evolved into a full-blown manufacturing revolution. By March 2025: 15 per cent of Apple’s global iPhone output is produced in India.
Over 3 million iPhones were exported from India to the US in March 2025 alone. Apple has expanded from making older models to assembling premium flagships like the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, as well as AirPods in Telangana.
What started as a low-risk diversification experiment is now a core component of Apple’s global supply chain strategy. In fact, by 2026, Apple is expected to manufacture all iPhones sold in the US exclusively in India, eliminating tariff vulnerability from its China-based plants.
Apple’s manufacturing partners are also making massive bets on India: Foxconn is acquiring 300 acres of land in Uttar Pradesh for a new mega-plant. A $2.6 billion facility is under construction in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
Tata Electronics, which recently began assembling iPhones in Tamil Nadu, is doubling iPhone casing capacity to one lakh units.
“This isn’t about tariffs. It’s about strategic anxiety over India’s rise.” Some analysts believe Trump’s tirade was also aimed at rousing domestic support ahead of the Republican primaries. His protectionist tone “build only in America” is seen as appealing to American blue-collar voters, even if it ignores the economic realities of global manufacturing.
“It would take Apple tens of billions of dollars and years of rebuilding to recreate India’s cost-efficient supply chains inside the US,” said Lisa Lamm, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research.
