“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” said Trump, speaking in Qatar on Thursday. Referring to Apple’s recent promise to spend $500bn (￡375bn) in the US, he added: “I said to him: ‘Tim, you’re my friend. You’re coming here with 500bn but now you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

The complex manufacturing process behind iPhones involves more than 1,000 components sourced from all over the world, which are largely put together in China.

However, production in India has reportedly increased due to trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“I said to Tim … we’ve treated you really good, we’ve put up with all the plants that you’ve built in China for years, now you got to build [for] us,” Trump said. “We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves ... we want you to build here.”