A lady sits on a bus in Sriperumbudur district within the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the place many ladies are employed in manufacturing. India hopes to draw extra enterprise because the Trump administration imposes tariffs on China.
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SRIPERUMBUDUR, India — The ladies knocking on doorways of the employment businesses that dot the roads of this industrial city are one signal of how India has profited from U.S. tensions with China.
Right here within the southern state of Tamil Nadu, many search work at one firm: FoxConn, which manufactures iPhones for Apple. Ladies make up some 70% of the Sriperumbudur plant’s workforce.
Twenty-one-year-old Keerthana, who solely has one title, was sleepily ready for a bus to the FoxConn dormitory housing ladies workers. She’d arrived within the morning on the in a single day bus from her hometown. An company instantly provided her a job at FoxConn. She mentioned she wasn’t certain what job she’d be assigned, however she was instructed she’d earn $170 a month, double her earlier wages in a garment manufacturing unit. “I’ll send the money to my father,” she beamed. “It will really help us.”
Such wages are life-changing for a lot of Indian ladies, and for that, says former Indian authorities financial adviser Arvind Subramanian, “I am unambiguously in favor of manufacturing. Because you get many, many more women getting jobs.”
A constructing housing feminine employees within the district of Sriperumbudur within the southern Indian state of Tamil Naidu. India hopes to lure extra companies to its shores.
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Getting extra ladies into poverty-lifting work is a key purpose why India, and Tamil Nadu specifically, seeks to draw extra labor-intensive manufacturing. Greater than 40% of ladies who work in India’s factories accomplish that in Tamil Nadu, though the state is house to solely 6% of India’s 1.4 billion individuals.
Now India is hoping it is going to have an opportunity to lure extra manufacturing to its shores amid deteriorating U.S.-China relations and because the Trump administration’s tariff insurance policies make it costlier to do enterprise in China.
President Trump shakes arms with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the White Home, Feb. 13.
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“Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi’s big bet is that as more and more companies are seeking to exit China … India is poised to play in a very big way,” says Milan Vaishnav, who directs the South Asia program on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace, a nonpartisan worldwide affairs assume tank.
It could construct on India’s achievements in attracting manufacturing because the temper in opposition to China grew hostile through the first Trump administration, and by the pandemic, when considerations grew over China’s dominance of worldwide provide chains. India continued attracting manufacturing by the Biden years, as the previous president stored Trump-era tariffs on some Chinese language-made merchandise and raised others.
“The fact that China was discriminated against,” says Subramanian, “meant that India was a good place from which to sell back to the United States.”
A multinational firm stationed within the district of Sriperumbudur within the southern Indian state of Tamil Naidu.
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One firm that shifted operations from China to India in 2017 was FoxConn, a choice extensively seen as reflecting Apple’s plans to diversify its manufacturing.
Now India manufactures almost 15% of all Apple iPhones, and is the second largest exporter after China. India hopes to almost double its share of iPhone manufacturing to 25% in the approaching years. Final yr it exported over $20 billion value of cellphones — a 44% rise over 2023, spotlighting how quickly this market is rising.
An commercial for feminine employees at a labor-hire firm within the district of Sriperumbudur within the southern Indian state of Tamil Naidu.
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However there is a key impediment to India’s hopes of attracting extra manufacturing: Trump’s China tariff insurance policies. Indian analysts say he is been softer than anticipated on China, the place he imposed 20% tariffs — after campaigning on imposing as much as 60% tariffs.
“We haven’t seen Mr. Trump as being as tough as he was expected to be,” says Suhasini Haidar, diplomatic editor of The Hindu. Indian officers hoped “the U.S. would get so tough on China that eventually companies would be forced to move to a country like India,” she says. “That promise has not played out so far.”
Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Saxena Middle for Up to date South Asia at Brown College, says Trump’s comparatively gentle method towards China could also be as a consequence of “Elon Musk’s rising profile in the Trump power structure.” Musk’s enterprise pursuits are entrenched in China.
Then there are Trump’s grievances with India over its commerce surplus with the U.S., its largest buying and selling companion, which was $45 billion final yr. India’s tariffs — which the US Commerce Consultant mentioned in its 2024 report are “the highest of any major world economy” — vary from 45% on vegetable oils to 150% on alcoholic drinks and 100% on espresso.
A lady walks at nightfall within the district of Sriperumbudur within the southern Indian state of Tamil Naidu.
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Throughout his State of the Union handle, Trump mentioned reciprocal tariffs on India and different nations would start on April 2. India could lose up to $7 billion in commerce with the U.S. if these tariffs are utilized, Reuters studies, citing Citigroup.
However a Tamil Nadu authorities consultant tells NPR he believes corporations will proceed shifting to India due to different components — together with a want to diversify from China and to base themselves in a big client market. He spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of the difficulty of tariffs is politically delicate in India.
However, he mentioned, “what hurts pipeline investment more than bad policy is uncertainty,” referring to weeks of Trump’s bulletins on how, and when, tariffs could be imposed.
The methods by which India is perhaps affected are not any concern for this Trump administration, says Varshney.
“American companies making more investments abroad is not what Mr. Trump wants,” he says. “American companies making more investments in America and foreign companies making investments in America is what he wants.”
Omkar Khandekar and Vinodh Arulappan contributed to this report.
