Trump announces 25% tariff on Indian imports • The Register
world war fee Just as signs pointed to a slight easing in global trade tensions, US President Donald Trump opened a new front in his trade offensive, this time with a 25 percent tariff on goods from India.
Trump took to Truth Social today to announce his tariff, which will begin this Friday on August 1. The US president justified the move by complaining that India’s own tariffs on US goods are too high, and that India has too cozy a trade relationship with Russia.
“While India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their Tariffs are far too high … and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country,” the president said. “Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY.”
Trump opined that India’s purchasing of energy from Russia has fueled the war in Ukraine “at a time when everyone wants Russia to stop.”
The White House hasn’t released any official statement on Trump’s informal announcement, but a White House spokesperson confirmed to The Register that the president’s social media proclamation is an accurate reflection of policy.
Trump also claimed on Truth Social that India would face an additional penalty on top of the 25 percent tariff for continued trade with Russia, but that penalty wasn’t specified in the post or by the White House.
More trade chaos for the smartphone market
It feels like just moments ago the world was fretting about how badly tariffs on China were hurting the US smartphone market, but those tariffs are now on hold (at least temporarily), and there’s been another monumental shift in the US smartphone market recently, too. India has become the primary source for US smartphone imports – not exactly a fact worth celebrating in light of present circumstances.
In Q2 2025, smartphones assembled in India accounted for 44 percent of US imports, up from just 13 percent a year ago, while China’s share has dropped from 61 percent to 25 percent, according to a recent report from Canalys.
“Many vendors have invested in manufacturing in India over the last decade (starting with the Chinese vendors), partly to avoid extra import duties,” Canalys smartphone and IoT market analyst Runar Bjørhovde said in an email to The Register. “Almost all vendors are going ‘all-in’ on India, including Apple in the most recent quarters, seeing a growing opportunity coming alongside a growing middle class.”
“The long-term objective is around supply chain verification; the short-term pull is tariff uncertainty,” Bjørhovde added.
With that Canalys report coming out just days before Trump’s India tariff announcement today, we reached back out to Bjørhovde to get his take on how the news changes that analysis on India.
Trump is struggling to put pressure on Russia. He’s hoping India might be able to push on Russia too
For starters, Bjørhovde believes the Russia justification is a strange one. He noted that India has long been a relatively neutral trade partner for the US, Russia, China, and other countries, making it an odd choice for using as a political tool – except that getting the country to cooperate with Trump might convince Putin to end the war.
“Trump is struggling to put pressure on Russia,” Bjørhovde said on the phone. “He’s hoping India might be able to push on Russia too.”
If India decides not to play ball, will that tariff go into effect at the end of the week? It very well might, Bjørhovde said, and the smartphone industry is pretty much backed into a corner.
Smartphone makers are pretty limited in terms of where they can manufacture devices at scale, Bjørhovde said, with China, India, and Vietnam being the dominant places to do assembly. Samsung has opted to move operations to Vietnam, but for Apple, the choice has been India of late – and not only because it’s a safer bet than China (even with tariffs, according to Bjørhovde). It’s also the country’s growing middle class.
“India has a massive and growing middle class that’s a surging market for Apple right now,” Bjørhovde told us, adding that India’s prohibitive import tariffs mean manufacturing domestically is hugely incentivized. Most smartphone makers manufacture devices for the Indian market in India, Bjørhovde said. Apple is the only one to export devices from India to foreign markets, however, the Canalys analyst explained.
In other words, yes, tariffs on India are going to hit Apple, but it probably won’t be a cause to move operations. “Tariffs or no, India is still a better bet for Apple than China,” Bjørhovde said.
Then again, there’s always the question of whether this latest tariff threat will last; most of the prior threats have come to nothing.
“Ever since Trump’s ‘Liberation Day‘ we’ve been advising clients to just wait, watch and see what happens,” Bjørhovde said. “Based on this latest tariff argument we’re going to have to just wait and see yet again.” ®
