DOHA: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he urged Apple to manufacture its products in the US 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 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.”
Apple announced in February it would invest more than $500 billion in the US 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.
On Monday, the US and China announced an agreement to suspend tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days, de-escalating a trade war that has spooked financial markets and raised fears of a global economic downturn.
Before the agreement between Beijing and Washington, Cook said Apple was “not able to estimate the impact of tariffs precisely.”
When presenting the tech company’s firstquarter 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 percent US tariffs on products from China — the company’s long-time manufacturing hub — despite a temporary reprieve for high-end tech goods such as smartphones and computers.
Although completed smartphones are exempted from Trump’s tariffs for now, not all components that go into Apple devices are spared.
