The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said Thursday that he spoke with Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, and told him not to expand his production facilities in India, but that he did it in the United States.
“Yesterday I had a small problem with Tim Cook,” Trump said during his visit to Qatar.
“I said, Tim, you are my friend, I treated you very well. You come here with $ 500 billion, but now you are building throughout India,” he said, referring to the Apple plan announced in February to invest $ 500 billion in the US. UU. For the next four years.
Trump said he informed Cook that he does not want him to build production facilities in India, and that Apple will be “improving its production in the United States.”
The president of the United States said that selling American products in the world’s most populous country is “very difficult” because India has one of the highest tariff barriers in the world.
However, he pointed out that, although the Asian country seeks an agreement in import tariffs, India has offered them an “non -tariff” agreement.
Trump’s comments occurred after Tim Cook said earlier this month that most Apple products that will be sold in the United States in the coming months will be obtained from India and Vietnam instead of China, which has been the objective of the highest rates of the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
“We hope that most of the iPhones sold in the United States have India as their country of origin,” Cook said.
Meanwhile, the main production location “for almost all products for iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Airpods sold in the US.”
Cook pointed out that the great variety of all products sold outside the United States will continue to be manufactured in China.
Apple is among the most impacted technological companies in the United States, with their actions that fall by around 5.1 percent since the tariffs were announced.
Due to the low production costs, most Apple products are now manufactured in China.
The Trump administration has repeatedly declared that it wants Apple to move production to the United States.
Earlier this week, the United States and China agreed to a reduction of punitive tariffs for an initial period of 90 days, indicating a rare moment of relief in its prolonged commercial conflict and increased the hopes of long -term economic stability.
