US President Trump had publicly criticized Apple for transferring production to India earlier, saying that "we hope to build factories in the United States, not India." Currently, India, like most U.S. trading partners, faces a 10% benchma...
US President Trump had publicly criticized Apple for transferring production to India earlier, saying that "we hope to build factories in the United States, not India."
Currently, India, like most U.S. trading partners, faces a 10% benchmark tariff and is trying to negotiate a deal to avoid an additional 26% reciprocal tariff that Trump suspended after the announcement in April.
This reflects that Apple is accelerating its "Made in India" strategy to circumvent the impact of Sino-US tariff frictions.
According to Reuters, the total value of Apple phones exported from India to the United States by Foxconn from India has reached US$4.4 billion, exceeding the full-year total of US$3.7 billion in 2024. This marks the beginning of success of Apple's strategy to use India as an alternative production base.
Apple supplier Foxconn exported Apple phones worth US$3.2 billion (about S$4.1 billion) from India from March to May this year, 97% of which were shipped to the United States, far higher than the average of 50% in 2024.
In addition to Foxconn, Tata Electronics, a subsidiary of Tata Group in India, has also risen to become Apple's second largest supplier in India. Its Apple mobile phones exported to the United States from March to April account for an average of 86%, which shows that Apple's production chain in India is gradually taking shape.
In order to bypass the high tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese manufacturing, Apple chartered a flight in March this year to ship iPhone 13, 14, 16 and 16e models worth about $2 billion from India to the United States, and promoted the customs clearance time of Chennai Airport from 30 hours to six hours.
