Donald Trump has launched a direct threat to Apple: If you want to sell the iPhone in the United States, you must manufacture them there. Otherwise, you will have to assume a 25%tariff. This threat is part of its new commercial offensive, which also includes a 50% tariff to European products and measures against other great American technological ones.
Apple, however, had already begun to reorder his production map. Tim Cook announced that “The majority” of the iPhone sold in the United States in 2025 will be manufactured in India. It is a message: Apple has no intention – not real capacity – to transfer its production to American soil in the short or medium term.
In figures. Today, making an iPhone in China costs around $ 450. If that production was transferred to the United States, the cost per unit would shoot up to $ 1,400-1,600. And if the entire supply chain in US territory was also replicated, the final price to the consumer could overcome the 2,000 dollars..
Apple’s margin would not endure that blow. And consumers either.
Yes, but. Moving production to India barely represents an increase from 10% to 15% compared to China. With an average sale price in the United States of about $ 1,000 to $ 1,200 per unit, Apple can absorb that difference, affect the customer or a mixture of both. Always without turning the iPhone into an unattainable luxury product. Trump’s 25% tariff, if applied, would be even more expensive.
Between bambalins. India is more than a momentary escape route. Apple has been preparing for this turn for years. Foxconn has invested $ 1.5 billion to expand its plant in Chennai, and Tata Electronics has accelerated the construction of new assembly lines in Tamil Nadu. In 2024, 18% of the iPhone have already left India. In 2025 it will be 32%.
Cook does not improvise: he knows that producing in the United States would have been reconstructing the infrastructure and technical specialization that Asia offers today. India is not China, but it has something that the United States does not: a young, cheap and trained population, as well as a government (that of Modi) willing to encourage every dollar invested.
The context. Apple has already promised to invest 500,000 million dollars in the United States in the next four years. But it will do it in chips, data centers and artificial intelligence servers, not in iPhones factories. Trump knows it, and that’s why he attacks: investment is not enough. It wants production. And he wants to see her inside her borders.
By the way, half Billón’s investment had a small print of Cantabria’s size:
On the other hand, manufacturing iPhone is not riding furniture. It is a high precision operation, with thousands of components assembled in record times for workers in 12 -hour shifts. The United States does not have the ecosystem, nor labor, nor the right labor cost to replicate that. Trump can press, but cannot alter the economic laws of global logistics.
And now what. Apple will play time. You can negotiate exceptions, delays or adjustments, as did in 2019 with Chinese tariffs. But if Trump fulfills his threat, he will have to choose between paying billions in tariffs … or raising prices.
And there is the paradox:
- If Apple manufactured in the United States, the iPhone would cost 1,200 to more than 2,000 and even $ 3,000.
- If it remains in India, with 25% of Trump included, it would rise only to about 1,500.
Manufacture in India, even penalized, is still more profitable than producing at home.
Outstanding image | Xataka
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