Apple is manufacturing more of its iPhone 17 phones for the US in India instead of in China, and for the first time, the full lineup of new models will ship from India at launch, according to Bloomberg. The company is also working on a successor to the iPhone 16E that it plans to make in India, Bloomberg says.
Apple has increasingly been moving iPhone production to India to reduce its dependence on manufacturing in China. The company already expects to pay $1.1 billion in tariffs for the current quarter, but Bloomberg reports that currently, Apple’s exports of iPhones to the US from India are exempted from tariffs. That’s despite the Trump administration’s 50 percent tariff on many imports from India, and while analyst Patrick Moorhead says.the move “does dodge some tariffs,” he noted that iPhone subassemblies are still mostly produced in China then shipped to India for final assembly.
However, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Tuesday morning that the administration plans to increase tariffs on India, saying it’s a result of the country buying and selling Russian oil despite sanctions from the war in Ukraine.
