US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that India had offered a trade deal that proposed “no tariffs” for American goods, while expressing his dissatisfaction with Apple’s (AAPL.O) plans to invest in India.
New Delhi is seeking to clinch a trade deal with the US within the 90-day pause announced by Trump on April 9 on tariff hikes for major trading partners.
“It is very hard to sell in India, and they are offering us a deal where basically they are willing to literally charge us no tariffs,” Trump said in a meeting with executives in the Qatari capital Doha.
Reuters has reported that New Delhi has offered to reduce duties to zero on 60 per cent of tariff lines in a first phase of the deal under negotiation with Washington, while offering preferential access to nearly 90pc of the merchandise India imports from the US.
India’s equity benchmarks jumped to a seven-month high after Trump’s comment on the deal with India.
The Indian trade ministry did not reply to a mail seeking comments on the proposed deal.
Trump in Doha said he had confronted Apple’s CEO Tim Cook about shifting production to India, as the American company moves to make most of its iPhones sold in the United States at factories in India by the end of 2026, and is speeding up those plans to navigate potentially higher tariffs in China.
“Tim, we treated you very good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years … we are not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves, they are doing very well, we want you to build here”, Trump recalled himself telling Cook, who was not in the Doha meeting.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in recent years promoted India as a smartphone manufacturing hub and Apple’s suppliers have ramped up production in the country.
In March, Apple’s main India suppliers Foxconn and Tata shipped nearly $2 billion worth of iPhones to the US, an all-time high, to bypass Trump’s impending tariffs.
The United States is India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade totalling some $129bn in 2024. The trade balance is currently in favour of India, which runs a $45.7bn surplus with the US.
India’s trade minister Piyush Goyal will lead a trade delegation to the United States starting May 16 to advance trade negotiations, two government officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
India has some of the world’s highest tariffs on imports, and Trump has previously called India a “tariff abuser”.
