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Monday, June 30, 2025

Trump Wants America to Make iPhones. Here’s How India Is Doing It. - The New York Times

Trump Wants America to Make iPhones. Here’s How India Is Doing It.

"India is carving out a new space for Foxconn and other high-end manufacturers, just as President Trump demands American companies do at home.

Several people, all dressed in blue robes with blue hairnets, are attaching wires on circuit boards.
Workers assembling circuit boards at Zetwerk Electronics in Bengaluru, India. Industries that feed Apple’s factory towns in China are coalescing in India’s heartland.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

By Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar

Photographs and Video by Saumya Khandelwal

Reporting from 11 businesses in Devanahalli, India, near the Foxconn plant north of Bengaluru.

A new iPhone factory in an out-of-the-way corner of India looks like a spaceship from another planet. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles most of the world’s iPhones for Apple, has landed amid the boulders and millet fields of Devanahalli.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

The sleek buildings rising on the 300-acre site, operational but still growing, are emerging evidence of an estimated $2.5 billion investment.

This is what President Trump wants Apple to do in the United States. What is happening in this part of India shows both why that sounds attractive and why it will probably not happen without sustained government financial support to revive U.S. manufacturing and training to expand the pool of qualified factory workers.

In India, Apple is doubling down on a bet it placed after the Covid-19 pandemic began and before Mr. Trump’s re-election. Many countries, starting with the United States, were eager to reduce their reliance on factories in China. Apple, profoundly dependent on Chinese production, was quick to act.

Analysts at Counterpoint Research calculated that India had succeeded in satisfying 18 percent of the global demand for iPhones by early this year, two years after Foxconn started making iPhones in India. By the end of 2025, with the Devanahalli plant fully online, Foxconn is expected to be assembling between 25 and 30 percent of iPhones in India.

A dump truck and other construction vehicles on flattened, reddish ground next to a road. A midrise building is under construction in the background.
Foxconn, the longtime Taiwanese manufacturer for Apple, started assembling phones in India two years ago and is still expanding.
Foxconn is building dormitories for workers as well as factories as it aims to significantly ramp up manufacturing capacity by the end of the year.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

This newest factory is the largest of several making Apple products in India. Its full frame is still rising from red dust. Cranes are at work above the skeletons of high-rise dormitories for women workers. But about 8,000 people are already at work on two factory floors. Soon there should be 40,000.

The effects on the region are transformative. It’s a field day for job-seekers and landowners. And the kind of crazy-quilt supply chain of smaller industries that feeds Apple’s factory towns in China is coalescing in India’s heartland. Businesses are selling Foxconn the goods and services it needs to make iPhones, including tiny parts, assembly-line equipment and worker recruitment.

Some of the firms are Indian; others are Taiwanese, South Korean or American. Some were already in the area, while others are setting up in India for the first time.

The changes spurred by Foxconn are rippling broadly through Bengaluru, a city of eight million people that had a start in the 20th century as home to India’s first aerospace centers. But its manufacturing base was pushed aside, first by call centers and then by flashier work in microchip design and outsourced professional services. Going back to the factory floor, as they’re doing in Devanahalli, is what Mr. Trump wants American workers to do.

To see the changes afoot here is to understand the allure of bringing back manufacturing. Wages are rising 10 to 15 percent around the Foxconn plant. Businesses are quietly making deals to supply Foxconn and Apple’s other contractors.

A factory that makes plastic parts for bank cash machines hosted a team from Foxconn for a tour. A foundry that makes yarn-spinning machinery was hoping it might start making the metal bits Foxconn might need in its new factory.

Neither Foxconn nor Apple replied to requests for comment about their operations in India.

A high-powered spray is used to make specialized parts at the Indo-MIM facility.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

India has been working toward a breakthrough like this for a long time. Its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called hydroelectric dams, steel plants and research institutes the “temples of modern India.” In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a “Make in India” policy. Since 2020, his government has committed $26 billion to subsidizing strategic manufacturing goals.

India’s most urgent reason for developing industry is to create jobs. Unlike the United States, it does not have enough: not in services, manufacturing or anything else. Nearly half its workers are involved in farming. With India’s population peaking, it needs about 10 million new jobs a year just to keep up.

It also wants to achieve the kind of financial power and technological autonomy that China found as it became the factory to the world.

One problem is that India’s electronics factories still import the most valuable of the 1,000 components that go into a finished iPhone, like chips and camera modules. Skeptics disparage India’s success with the final assembly of iPhones as “screwdriver work,” complaining that too little of the devices’ value is made in India.

But the government, dangling subsidies, is persuading companies like Apple to source more of those parts locally. It is already getting casings, specialized glass and paints from Indian firms. Apple, which opened its first Indian stores two years ago, is required by the Indian government to source 30 percent of its products’ value from India by 2028.

A process used to manufacture copper parts at the Indo-MIM facility.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Indo-MIM, an Indian company with an American-born boss, is the kind that contributes to the neighborhood forming around Apple’s production and also benefits from it. At a plant near Devanahalli, in southern Karnataka State, Indo-MIM’s engineers perform metal-injection molding for hundreds of companies around the world. It makes parts for airplanes, luxury goods, medical devices and more.

The company is already making jigs or brackets for use in the Foxconn plant. In addition, a “critical mass” of specialty firms means that Indo-MIM no longer needs to make many of the tools it uses to make its products, said Krishna Chivukula, its chief executive. 

“You don’t want to have to make everything yourself,” he said, adding it means Indo-MIM can concentrate on what it does best.

Mr. Chivukula said the work force made Devanahalli fertile ground for factories. “The people here are very hungry,” he said. “They’re looking for opportunity, and then on top of that millions of them are engineers.”

Still, despite the surplus of engineers, companies are bringing in talent from East Asia. Prachir Singh, an analyst for Counterpoint, said it had taken 15 years to figure out what would work in China and five years to import this much of it to India.

Centum is an Indian-origin contract manufacturer, like Foxconn is to Apple. Centum makes circuit boards that go into products like air-to-air missiles, forklifts and fertility scanners. Nikhil Mallavarapu, its executive director, said the company was in talks to customize testing equipment for the Foxconn factory

Robotic equipment attaching components to a printed circuit board.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Newly hired engineers and other professionals are pouring into the area. Many moved hundreds of miles while others must commute hours a day to get to work. Some rise at 3:30 a.m. to make the 8 a.m. shift.

But India is thick with people. A five-minute walk away, a village called Doddagollahalli looks the same as it did before Foxconn landed. Nearly all the houses clustered around a sacred grove belong to farming families growing millet, grapes and vegetables.

Some villagers are renting rooms to Foxconn workers. Many more are trying to sell their land. But Sneha, who goes by a single name, has found a job on the Foxconn factory’s day shift. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics. She can walk home for lunch every day, a corporate lanyard swinging from her neck.

It is people like Sneha, and the thousands of her new colleagues piling into her ancestral place, who make Foxconn’s ambitions for India possible. Mr. Trump wants to revive the fortunes of left-behind American factory towns, but the pipeline of qualified young graduates is not there.

Josh Foulger has recruited lots of motivated Indian workers like Sneha. He heads the electronics division of Zetwerk, an Indian contract manufacturer with factories in Devanahalli that sees itself as a smaller competitor to Foxconn. He said he routinely got 700 job applications a year from local tech schools. It is a matter of scale: Karnataka State alone, he pointed out, has a population half the size of Vietnam’s.

All of India’s “states are very keen on getting manufacturing,” said Mr. Foulger, who grew up in southern India and made his home in Texas before moving back to India, where he set up shop for Foxconn. India has jobs for engineers and managers and all the way down the ladder. “Manufacturing does a very democratic job” of meeting the demand for good jobs, he said.

Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.

Alex Travelli is a correspondent based in New Delhi, writing about business and economic developments in India and the rest of South Asia.

Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades."

Trump Wants America to Make iPhones. Here’s How India Is Doing It. - The New York Times

Saturday, June 14, 2025

iPadOS 26 hands-on: The iPad upgrade pros wished for

iPadOS 26 hands-on: The iPad upgrade pros wished for

“iPadOS 26 introduces three multitasking options: Full Screen Apps, Windowed Apps, and Stage Manager. Windowed Apps, similar to macOS, allows for resizable windows and familiar window controls. iPadOS 26 also includes a new menu bar, a more macOS-like Files app, and the Preview app for viewing and editing PDFs and images.

iPadOS 26 multitasking features
New multitasking features are the highlight of iPadOS 26. 
Screenshot: Apple

Those who want their iPad to function more like a Mac got their wish: iPadOS 26 includes multitasking features very similar to the ones in macOS. This year’s iPad upgrade also borrows plenty of other things from Apple’s desktop OS.

I loaded the initial iPadOS 26 beta on my iPad Pro. Here’s what it’s like to use it … and why pro users should be excited while non-pro users shouldn’t worry.

Broadly speaking, the iPad must satisfy two separate audiences. One group uses the iPad as a light-duty computer for social media and watching videos. But the other group demands much more, using their iPad for traditional Mac/PC tasks.

3 options for dealing with apps and windows in iPadOS 26

iPadOS 26 should satisfy both, because it offers three different ways to display apps on the screen, ranging from basic to advanced. And it wraps it all up in the translucent Liquid Glass design that Apple is rolling out to all its operating systems.

Full Screen Apps

The first group needn’t be concerned that iPadOS 26 will force them to relearn to use their tablets. It includes a new option called Full Screen Apps that makes the iPad act much like the first one did way back in 2010. In this mode, there’s no side-by-side multitasking at all. It’s very simple to use, and ideal if all you want to do is watch video and maybe do some online shopping.

Windowed Apps

The next option for working with applications is called Windowed Apps. It’s new in iPadOS 26, and lets you open applications in resizable windows and place them exactly where you want. It’s very Mac-like.

The iPad used to put limits on where app windows could be placed. They couldn’t completely cover another window, for example, or stretch way off the side of the screen. In iPadOS 26, those limitations disappear.

Whenever you open an application, it joins any other apps already open on the screen. And speaking of Mac-like features, iPad now includes the same red, yellow and green window controls as macOS, allowing you to close, minimize, resize or tile windows in a familiar way.

I got curious how many app windows I could open at once. I stopped when I reached eight only because the screen became a crowded, unusable mess. You’ll run out of space before you reach any other limit. And with my iPad Pro, I can have a bunch more open on an external screen at the same time.

Note that Apple says Windowed Apps is available to all iPad users — even those with the budget iPad — not just those with a pricier model.

Stage Manager

Stage Manager is the third multitasking option for users in iPadOS 26. It’s been around for years but has become far less necessary than it used to be now that Windowed Apps is available. It also offers applications in floating, resizable windows, but lets these be grouped into “stages.”

It’s a convenient way to organize your open app windows. For example, I have all my social media apps in a stage so I can open them all at once. Personally, I’ll continue to use Stage Manager because I’ve gotten used to this capability.

Just so there’s no confusion, Stage Manager is no longer necessary to have multiple application windows on an external screen. Windowed Apps can handle the job, too.

Files, Preview and more features borrowed from macOS

Another feature that iPadOS 26 borrows from macOS is a new menu bar at the top of the screen. It’s always there, just hidden until you swipe down from the top of the display or move the cursor to the top of the screen.

The Files app, which is crucial for multitasking power users, also gets an upgrade in iPadOS 26. Early iPads didn’t even come with a Files app, but Apple finally added one in iOS 11, and then steadily improved it. The version in iPadOS 26 is quite close to the macOS one. You can expect resizable columns and collapsible folders.

The macOS Preview app just made the jump to iPad, too. I can view PDFs and images with it, and even make some edits.

iPadOS 26 multitasking features make the iPad more Mac-like

I approve of making the iPad act more like a Mac, but not because macOS is better. However, anyone who frequently switches back and forth between iPad and Mac has to mentally switch gears to handle the different user interfaces. iPadOS 26 makes the switch far easier.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, talked about it in an interview with iJustine this week, saying, “Those elements where things feel familiar from a Mac perspective is just a little bit less of this kind of cognitive overhead of [asking], ‘Oh, how do I do it?’”

Quite good for a first beta

I’ve deliberately not talked about bugs and other problems with iPadOS 26 because I’m trying out the initial beta of an operating system that won’t be released for three months. Of course there are problems.

There’ll undoubtedly be changes between beta 1 and the final version, too. And not just bug fixes.

What’s important is the overall direction Apple is taking the iPad with iPadOS 26, with Mac-like multitasking and other big advances — and that’s a good one.“

Wednesday, June 04, 2025

Apple iPhone 17 Air Tipped To Drop USB-C, Other Ports In Major Design Overhaul

Apple iPhone 17 Air Tipped To Drop USB-C, Other Ports In Major Design Overhaul

“This action paves the way for a new era of incredibly thin smartphones and is consistent with Apple’s vision for the iPhone which will no longer require physical ports.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>The USB-C and other conventional connectors are anticipated to be dropped from the iPhone 17 Air in favour of a fully wireless device. (Source: Official website)</p></div>

Apple is anticipated to release the iPhone 17 Air, along with other models in the iPhone 17 series, in September. The iPhone 17 Air is on track to become Apple’s thinnest smartphone to date, with considerable design changes.

In a bid to make the device slimmer, Apple may try a daring move that might change the smartphone industry. The USB-C and other conventional connectors are anticipated to be dropped from the iPhone 17 Air in favour of a fully wireless device.

This action paves the way for a new era of incredibly thin smartphones and is consistent with Apple’s vision for the iPhone which will no longer require physical ports.

iPhone 17 Air To Lead Port-less Devices Of The Future?

Tech experts claim that in a bid to make the iPhone 17 Air thinner, Apple will do away with features like a secondary speaker and SIM card port, as well as shrink the size of the battery. Most significantly, Apple’s goal of a wireless future is demonstrated by the phone’s expected lack of a USB-C port. 

Apple has improved its MagSafe technology to comply with the Qi2 wireless charging standard, which is utilised by other smartphone makers, in order to achieve this goal. If the iPhone provides a truly wireless charging experience on par with or better than that of conventional ports, Apple may be able to get around the USB-C mandate of the European Union. It could also herald a new “portless” design philosophy for Apple’s future devices. 

Can iPhone 17 Air Duplicate MacBook Air?

Apple has done this design change in the past as well. In the same vein, Apple gave weight and thinness precedence over conventional features in its MacBook Air series.

By pitching the iPhone 17 Air between base and top-tier models, Apple is looking to duplicate this success in the smartphone world, at the same time offering a wider range of devices and more choices to the customer.“

Thursday, May 29, 2025

Canon R5 Mark II vs Sony A7RV Battle of the BEASTS

Southwest Joins Other Airlines in Tightening Battery Rules: What to Know - The New York Times

Rules for Portable Batteries on Planes Are Changing. Here’s What to Know.

"You might have to repack or turn off batteries before boarding flights with certain carriers. Southwest is becoming the first major U.S. airlines to tighten restrictions.

A woman walking through an airport corridor near a blue airplane.
A Southwest Airlines plane in Dallas. The airline will require passengers to keep portable chargers visible while using them.Desiree Rios for The New York Times

The rules around flying with portable batteries are becoming more confusing as some airlines and governments change their policies, citing the risk of fires.

Southwest Airlines is the first of the four biggest U.S. carriers to tighten its rules, citing incidents involving batteries on flights across airlines. Starting Wednesday, it will require passengers to keep portable chargers visible while using them.

Airlines in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong have also either changed their rules in a similar way or banned the use of portable chargers in-flight since a fire destroyed an Air Busan plane on the tarmac in South Korea in January. It was one of several recent aviation episodes that made travelers anxious.

There is no definitive link between portable batteries and the Air Busan fire, and an investigation is underway.

Because rules vary across airlines, you might find yourself having to repack or turn off batteries when boarding a plane. Here’s what you need to know.

Which airlines have changed their rules and why?

Southwest passengers will not be allowed to charge devices while they are stowed in overhead bins. The rule will help flight attendants act more quickly if a battery overheats or catches fire, Southwest said in a statement.

The Federal Aviation Agency requires only that devices containing lithium-ion batteries are kept in carry-on baggage, and the European Union’s aviation regulator has similar rules.

Rules vary among Europe’s biggest carriers. Ryanair, the low-cost Irish airline, tells passengers to remove lithium batteries before storing bags overhead. Britain’s EasyJet and Germany’s Lufthansa do not.

The South Korean government now requires that passengers keep portable chargers within arm’s reach and out of overhead bins, saying that the rule was implemented to ease anxiety about the risk of battery fires.

A fire destroyed an Air Busan plane in January.Yonhap/EPA, via Shutterstock

Major Taiwanese airlines implemented similar changes after the Air Busan episode. EVA Air and China Airlines announced a ban on using or charging power banks on their planes, although the batteries can still be stored in overhead compartments.

Thai Airways, Thailand’s flagship airline, said it would implement a similar ban on using and charging power banks, citing “incidents of in-flight fires on international airlines, suspected to be linked to power bank usage.” Singapore Airlines and its budget subsidiary, Scoot, also announced new rules.

Malaysia Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, has banned using and charging power banks, and storing them in overhead bins. Hong Kong’s aviation regulator has put a similar regulation into effect for all of the territory’s airlines, including Cathay Pacific.

Since 2016, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations agency that coordinates global aviation regulations, has banned lithium-ion batteries, the kind commonly found in power banks, from the cargo holds of passenger planes.

But there is no industry standard on how airlines regulate power banks, said Mitchell Fox, the director of the Asia Pacific Center for Aviation Safety.

They have become a part of everyday life only in recent years, and some consumers may be unaware of the risks, he said. 

What risks do these batteries pose?

Lithium-ion batteries have been used for decades to power smartphones and laptops, and are commonly used in portable power banks.

A lithium battery production line in China in 2019.Reuters

Each battery has a cell that can heat up quickly in a chain reaction that causes it to catch fire or explode. The F.A.A. warns that this reaction can happen if the battery is damaged, overcharged, overheated or exposed to water. Manufacturing defects are another potential cause.

Some products that use lithium-ion batteries, including smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles, have strict regulations and quality control standards, said Neeraj Sharma, a professor of chemistry at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who studies batteries. Others, like power banks, e-cigarettes, e-bikes and scooters, are less regulated, he said, raising the risk of malfunction.

“Make sure you get your devices from reputable manufacturers,” Professor Sharma said.

How often do batteries catch fire on planes?

The frequency of incidents involving lithium-ion batteries on U.S. airlines has been increasing. There were 84 last year, up from 32 in 2016. These included cases — in the cabins of both passenger and cargo planes — where batteries caught fire, emitted smoke or overheated. Portable chargers were the biggest culprit, followed by e-cigarettes, according to the F.A.A.

Airlines around the world have for years required passengers to pack spare lithium-ion batteries in their carry-on luggage instead of in their checked bags so that any smoke or fire from the batteries can be noticed quickly. In the cargo hold, a fire might not be detected by a plane’s automatic fire-extinguishing system until it has become a critical problem.

What do flight crews do when there is a fire?

Fires in plane cabins that are caused by lithium-ion batteries are rarely deadly, and flight crews are generally well prepared to deal with them, said Keith Tonkin, the managing director of Aviation Projects, an aviation consulting company in Brisbane, Australia.

In many cases, passengers will notice their electronics overheating and inform crew members, who put the device in a thermal containment bag or water, with little disruption to the flight, according to the F.A.A. 

Yan Zhuang is a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news.

Francesca Regalado is a reporter on the Express desk, based in Seoul."

Southwest Joins Other Airlines in Tightening Battery Rules: What to Know - The New York Times

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Tech’s Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades - The New York Times

Tech’s Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades

"Apple’s chief executive has gone from winning President Trump’s praise to drawing his ire, deepening the company’s woes in a very bad year.

A close-up of Tim Cook, wearing a dark suit and white shirt.
President Trump’s threat of a 25 percent tariff on iPhones made anywhere except the United States came a little over a month after Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, won an exemption from a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

In the run-up to President Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East, the White House encouraged chief executives and representatives of many U.S. companies to join him. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, declined, said two people familiar with the decision.

The choice appeared to irritate Mr. Trump. As he hopscotched from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Trump took a number of shots at Mr. Cook.

During his speech in Riyadh, Mr. Trump paused to praise Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, for traveling to the Middle East along with the White House delegation. Then he knocked Mr. Cook.

“I mean, Tim Cook isn’t here but you are,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Huang at an event attended by chief executives like Larry Fink of the asset manager BlackRock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Jane Fraser of Citigroup and Lisa Su of the semiconductor company AMD.

Later in Qatar, Mr. Trump said he “had a little problem with Tim Cook.” The president praised Apple’s investment in the United States, then said he had told Mr. Cook, “But now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.”

On Friday morning, Mr. Trump caught much of his own administration and Apple’s leadership off guard with a social media post threatening tariffs of 25 percent on iPhones made anywhere except the United States. The post thrust Apple back into the administration’s cross hairs a little over a month after Mr. Cook had lobbied and won an exemption from a 145 percent tariff on iPhones assembled in China and sold in the United States.

The new tariff threat is a reversal of fortune for Mr. Cook. In eight years, he’s gone from one of Mr. Trump’s most beloved chief executives — whom the president mistakenly and humorously called Tim Apple in 2019 — to one of the White House’s biggest corporate targets. The breakdown has been enough to make insiders across Washington and Silicon Valley wonder: Has tech’s leading Trump whisperer lost his voice?

Nu Wexler, principal at Four Corners Public Affairs and a former Washington policy communications executive at Google and Facebook, said Mr. Cook’s “very public relationship” with Mr. Trump has backfired.

“It has put Apple at a disadvantage because every move, including a potential concession from Trump, is scrutinized,” Mr. Wexler said. Because Mr. Trump didn’t “have much incentive to either go easy on Apple or cut a deal on tariffs,” he said, “the incentive to crack down is much stronger.”

Apple did not provide comment. The White House declined to comment on the Middle East trip.

Mr. Trump’s new tariffs followed a report by The Financial Times that Apple’s supplier Foxconn would spend $1.5 billion on a plant in India for iPhones. The president said the tariffs would begin at the end of June and affect all smartphones made abroad, including Samsung’s devices.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Cook had visited Washington for a meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. During an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Mr. Bessent said the administration considered overseas production of semiconductors and electronics components “one of our greatest vulnerabilities,” which Apple could help address.

“President Trump has been consistently clear about the need to reshore manufacturing that is critical to our national and economic security, including for semiconductors and semiconductor products,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman. He added that the administration “continues to have a productive relationship with Apple.”

The timing of the White House’s new tariff plan couldn’t be worse for Mr. Cook, who has led Apple for nearly 14 years.

Last month, the company suffered a stinging defeat in an App Store trial. The judge in the trial rebuked Apple executives, saying they had “outright lied under oath” and that “Cook chose poorly,” and ruled that Apple had to change how it operates the App Store. Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief designer who became estranged from Mr. Cookand left the company in 2019, joined OpenAI last week to build a potential iPhone competitor. Its Vision Pro mixed reality headset, released in January 2024 to fanfare, has been a disappointment. And in March, Apple postponed its promised release of a new Siri, raising fresh doubts about its ability to compete in the industry’s race to adopt artificial intelligence.

Still, Apple’s market value has increased by more than $2.5 trillion under his leadership, or about $500 million a day since 2011. And Apple remains a moneymaking machine, generating an annual profit of nearly $100 billion.

With Mr. Trump’s re-election, Mr. Cook appeared to be in a strong position to help Apple navigate the new administration. In 2019, Mr. Trump said Mr. Cook was a “great executive because he calls me and others don’t.”

Mr. Cook still occasionally pushed back on the president’s agenda. During an appearance at a conference for Fortune magazine in late 2017, Mr. Cook explained that the company would love to make things in the United States but that China had more engineers and better skills. He appeared before a live audience on MSNBC a few months later and criticized the president’s policy on immigration.

This year, their warm relations have run cold. Mr. Trump is more determined to quickly move manufacturing to the United States, which has made Apple a primary target.

On other administration priorities like dismantling diversity initiatives, Mr. Cook has tried to take a diplomatic position. At its annual general shareholder meeting in February, he said that Apple remained committed to its “North Star of dignity and respect for everyone” and would continue to “create a culture of belonging,” but that it might need to make changes to comply with a changing legal landscape.

The bigger problem has been trade. Apple has stopped short of committing to making the iPhone, iPad or Mac laptops in the United States. Instead, the company has moved to assemble more iPhones in India.

Apple has tried to head off Mr. Trump’s criticisms of its overseas manufacturing by promising to spend $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. Mr. Cook also has emphasized that the company will source 19 billion chips from the United States this year, and will start making A.I. servers in Houston.

Servers haven’t satisfied Mr. Trump. He wants iPhones made in the United States badly enough to create what amounts to an iPhone tariff. It would increase the cost of shipping an iPhone from India or China to the United States by 25 percent. The costs aren’t so staggering that they would damage Apple’s business, but Mr. Trump could always ratchet up the levies until he gets his wish.

“If they’re going to sell it in America, I want it to be built in the United States,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “They’re able to do that.”

Mr. Cook hasn’t responded publicly.

Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis."

Tech’s Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades - The New York Times