“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said, referring to a state visit he made to Qatar. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.”
“We’re not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves…we want you to build here,’” he added.
Trump will want to see a bigger commitment to U.S. production beyond what is promised in the $500 billion investment, according to William Kerwin, a senior technology analyst at Morningstar. The president’s ultimate goal will likely be getting America’s largest tech company to commit to a “full-blown manufacturing facility” for iPhones or auxiliary Apple products, he said.
“It’s a little bit of a game of chicken,” Kerwin told Fortune. “Tim Cook, I think, has done a very good job of doing corporate diplomacy with the Trump administration, both in the first administration and the current one. But I think at the end of the day, Trump knows how debilitating a significant, full impact of tariffs would be on Apple and the business.”
“It’s just saying, ‘I think we can squeeze a little bit more out of you,’” Kerwin said.
Apple did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Trump’s comments on Cook are hardly the first time the president and the Apple CEO have made requests of each other and tested their yearslong relationship.
“It is giving up some inches to avoid giving up the mile,” Kerwin said.
Cook shouldn’t have to adjust his previous playbook in managing Trump’s request regarding India manufacturing, particularly because it’s not in Trump’s best interest to have iPhone prices double under his administration, Kerwin posited. If consumers were to link higher iPhone prices with Trump’s policy, it would dredge up negative sentiment about the economy and his presidency. Instead, Cook will likely not entirely acquiesce, but could make another pledge to increase Apple’s U.S. investment.
“It’s going to be somewhere in between, just to make both sides happy and to have some sort of headline announcement, even If it doesn’t move the needle all that much,” Kerwin said.