Google Shifts Pixel Production to India Amid tariff concerns

Google is planning to relocate Pixel manufacturing from Vietnam to India as it struggles with the US's volatile global tariff policy, reports state. In 2019, it moved from China to Vietnam to escape tariffs in Donald Trump's first term.

Google's parent, Alphabet, had also reportedly spoken with two of its Indian manufacturers, Dixon Technologies and Foxconn, to expand its production base in India. Indian factories already churn out over 40,000 Pixel phones every month for the local market, a figure that would greatly expand with this new production push.

The decision is to be applied to products that are going to the US market. As part of Trump's new tariff policy, products coming from Vietnam have a 46 percent tariff when they are entering the US, and Chinese products have a 145 percent tariff. There is a short-term 90-day hold off, except for the 10 percent base-line tariffs and the ones on China.

Western firms have been re-routing manufacturing out of China for years as geopolitical tensions with the US have increased. Export-led economies in the region, like Vietnam and Bangladesh, benefited from this shift. This re-routing of trade has been vocally criticised by US China hawks, however, who believed that these conduit economies became some sort of backdoor mechanism for cheap Chinese imports. Southeast Asian economies were particularly targeted with high rates under Trump's 'reciprocal' tariff statement in early April.

India is subject to a 26 percent tariff rate, which, although higher than previously, is nearly half of Vietnam's The industry officials said Alphabet had intentions to localise the manufacture of components like batteries, chargers, enclosures and fingerprint sensors in India, as most of these are imported at present.

US Vice President JD Vance is in India for trade negotiations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They claim to be making headway towards a bilateral agreement that would enable India to escape additional tariffs.