Apple and India might need to woo not just Trump but Xi too

Worries about the future of Apple in the country had been set off by US President Donald Trump, who said last month that he had told the company’s CEO Tim Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.” This seemed to contradict hopes, shared by both Cupertino and New Delhi, that most iPhones for the US market would come from India by the end of 2026.

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But on the ground, Apple Inc’s turn to the South Asian country seems well-entrenched. 

Reports have emerged of a new Foxconn campus meant to house 30,000 employees. This would be the largest such effort in India’s recent history. And another contract manufacturer, Tata Electronics, is now assembling the iPhone 16 at its South Indian plant.

Yet, CEOs and politicians may have begun to realize that the difficulties involved in shifting—or duplicating—an entire manufacturing ecosystem extend beyond placating Trump. This is a complex environment and there are severe obstacles to moving it out of China. US politics is only one, though perhaps the loudest. 

Admittedly, Apple has had a lot of success in India already. That’s why even Trump has been talking about it. In just the last year, the value of Apple products manufactured there has jumped 60% to $22 billion. Over $17 billion is exported; thanks to Apple, India’s $38 billion of electronics exports now earn more than even its world-famous pharmaceutical sector. No other investment has produced anything near this scale of return. In fact, it may be the only success of the Narendra Modi government’s pivot to industrial policy in the middle of his decade-plus in power.

This rare win happened because Apple  Inc and its suppliers were committed to moving production into India, and because both federal and state governments rewrote regulations and permissions to help them make the move. 

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Politicians kept up this support, even when there might be a price to pay. After a border clash between China and India in 2020 that left 20 of its soldiers dead, Indian officials restricted investment from Beijing. Those restrictions have slowly softened since then, primarily to ensure that Apple’s contractors didn’t get caught up in red tape.

That experience should have served as a reminder to New Delhi that attracting an entire ecosystem needs three sets of players to cooperate: companies, the destination market for their products and the source geography. Apple and Foxconn might be on board, Trump and his tariffs might be managed, but what of China?

A recent book by the former Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee argues that Apple in China, and Foxconn in particular, grew because American investors and engineers helped. 

That’s no surprise. 

Any industrial power trains its competitors and successors. That’s what Great Britain did for America centuries ago. The financiers, engineers and suppliers that make up an existing manufacturing ecosystem need to be willing and able to cooperate in creating a new one. They are generally well rewarded for it.

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Apple’s contract manufacturers and component suppliers, large and small, in China might be willing to set up shop in India—after all, profits are profits wherever they are earned. Some of their engineers might be happy to move to supervise new shop floors.

But, as it turns out, Beijing might not permit that to happen. Many experienced employees with crucial knowledge and skill-sets have found themselves forbidden to travel to India and Southeast Asia. 

Apple and New Delhi have both tried to woo Trump and make him accept the possibility that iPhones destined for the US will be made in India. 

But it appears that they may need to woo China’s President Xi Jinping as well.

Objectively, India’s Apple-led mobile phone ecosystem is nowhere near challenging China’s manufacturing dominance. China is, after all, an indispensable country not just for Apple, but for multiple companies struggling to shift production to India, Vietnam and elsewhere. But Beijing now appears to view Apple’s India project as a risk—dangerous enough that a few barriers should be erected in its path. 

Trump, Apple, New Delhi and Beijing appear agreed on Indian manufacturing’s potential over the next few years, whatever the rest of us might think. ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.