Trump threatens Apple with 25% tariffs if iPhone assembly doesn’t move to U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Apple, Inc. with 25% tariffs on iPhone imports if the company didn’t make them domestically. Repeating his insistence that he didn’t want iPhones to be assembled in India, Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “I have long informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s [sic] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” adding that if that doesn’t happen, “a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”

This is not the first time Mr. Trump has lashed out at Apple’s phone assembly operations in India, largely contract manufacturers with facilities in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. “We’re not interested in you building in India,” Mr. Trump said he told Apple CEO Tim Cook. “They can take care of themselves,” he said, adding that he expected the company to start assembling iPhones in the U.S. instead.

Apple and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When Mr. Trump first remarked on Apple’s manufacturing in India, a senior official told The Hindu that the government was not too “concerned” that the U.S. president’s words would have any impact on existing manufacturing commitments the company has made in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere.

Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Global Trade Research Institute and a former Additional Director General Foreign Trade, offered an unconventional take on the matter. He said, “If Mr. Trump wants Mr. Cook to assemble iPhones in the U.S., the Apple CEO should deliver.”

“Shifting iPhone assembly from India to the U.S. could unlock over 60,000 new jobs, immediately rising to 300,000 if production also moves out of China,” Mr. Srivastava wrote earlier this month. “These are not high-tech desk jobs, but hands-on factory roles that once built America’s middle class. It’s a rare opportunity to turn elite tech into broad-based employment — and breathe life back into U.S. industrial strength,” he said.

“It will also nudge India to focus on deep manufacturing and not be happy with superficial assembly jobs,” he added

Trump threatens 50% tariffs on EU as his trade war intensifies

Further, Mr. Trump on Friday (May 23, 2025) also threatened a 50% tax on all imports from the European Union.

The threats, delivered over social media, reflect Mr. Trump’s ability to disrupt the global economy with a burst of typing as well as the reality that his tariffs have yet to produce the trade deals he is seeking or the return of domestic manufacturing he has promised voters.

The Republican President said he wants to charge higher import taxes on goods from the EU, a long-standing U.S. ally, than from China, a geopolitical rival that had its tariffs cut to 30% this month so Washington and Beijing could hold negotiations.

Mr. Trump was upset by the lack of progress in trade talks with the EU, which has proposed mutually cutting tariffs to zero even as the president has publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10% tax on most imports.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States.”

The core of Mr. Trump’s argument against the EU is that America runs a “totally unacceptable” trade deficit with the 27 member states. Countries run trade deficits when they import more goods than they export.