Apple who are desperate to stop sales of their iPhone tablets and Mac PC’s declining after the introduction of tariffs by the US Trump administration appear to have seriously upset US President Donald Trump, who apparently was so angry with the big US Company, that he jumped on the blower to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Wanting to avoid tariffs hits of up to 145% Cook and his management team, came up with the notion of manufacturing in India instead of the USA, the only problem was, it was not a fit for the Presidents current mission of pushing Companies to manufacture in the US.

Instead, Apple opted to claim that they intended to manufacture in India, which in reality was more about Foxconn their assembly partner setting up a factory in India and then shipping parts manufactured in China with the final product branded Manufactured In India a move that would have attracted lower Tariffs.

Since that move Trump has lowered the tariff on Chinese imported goods with Apple’s Indian manufacturing plans now in strife, as Trump pushes Apple to manufacture its best-selling device in America.

Speaking in Qatar on the latest leg of his Middle East tour, Trump when asked said that he had “a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday” after the Apple chief executive confirmed earlier that Indian factories would supply the “majority” of iPhones sold in the US in the coming months.

The initial plan of shipping 60mn iPhones annually out of India was flawed from day one because India would struggle to manufacture the bulk of the components found in an Apple iPhone.

Trump told Cook: “We are treating you really good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years. We are not interested in you building in India.”

Trump apparently responded claiming that Apple was working on a plan to manufacture in the USA a move that could still result in tariffs on Chinese and South Korean components that are used in the bulk of products manufactured by Apple.

Analysts claim that that iPhone’s manufactured in the USA could be up to 20-30% more expensive that current model iPhones.

According to Trump Cook told him that Apple would be “upping their production in the United States” following the conversation.

Observers claim that Trump’s comments are the latest sign of a cooling in the president’s relationship with Apple who also upset Trump over their ‘Inclusion & Diversity’ policies which the Company is trying to wind back with Cook a big backer of the US Gay Rights Movement.

In another snub of Cook Trump said Speaking at an event in Riyadh this week after announcing a multibillion-dollar deal to sell hundreds of thousands of Nvidia processors to a new Saudi artificial intelligence project, that was attended by Nvidia chief Jensen Huang “Tim Cook isn’t here but you are.”

Apple PR spin doctors have been claiming that Apple intended to spend $500bn in the US during Trump’s four years in office, including producing chips and servers for AI.

Apart from the press release there appears to have been no other indication of how the $500bn would be invested in delivering Apple manufacturing to the USA especially as the Company pushes robotic manufacturing and has been used to paying in the past for cheap labour in China.

Currently Apple is facing huge challenges in replicating its vast Chinese supply chain and production facilities with observers claiming they don’t know how to implement a US program without lifting the cost of Apple goods.

In comparison Samsung moved to manufacturing smartphones in both Vietnam and India several years ago and are not exposed to Trump tariffs as much as Apple who have made billions in profits using cheap Chinese labour.

According to the Financial Times analysts estimate it would cost tens of billions of dollars and take years for Apple to increase iPhone manufacturing in the US, where it at present makes only a very limited number of products.

US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said last month that Cook had told him the US would need “robotic arms” to replicate the “scale and precision” of iPhone manufacturing in China.

“He’s going to build it here,” Lutnick said.

This is the same Trump administration official who claimed that an “Army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America”.

He now claims that his comments were taken out of context.

Mobile phones are now one of India’s top exports, with the country selling more than $7bn worth of them to the US in the 2024-25 financial year, up from $4.7bn the previous year.

The majority of these were iPhones, which Apple’s suppliers Foxconn and Tata Electronics make at plants in southern India’s Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states, this is where a great deal of smartphones heading to Australia are manufactured along with China.

Year to date Apple shares are down 13.5%.