lead apple Suppliers and global manufacturing giants Foxconn Exited $19.5 billion joint venture project with Indian conglomerate Vedanta That would have brought semiconductor and display manufacturing to Gujarat, India.
“Foxconn has decided not to proceed with the joint venture with Vedanta,” the Taiwanese company told CNBC. The move is a major blow to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions to transform India into a global high-tech manufacturing powerhouse.
Foxconn said the decision was “mutually agreed” but “confident” about India’s semiconductor ambitions. Vedanta did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. companies, including Apple, are asking their suppliers to diversify their supply chains beyond mainland China as geopolitical and economic tensions mount. Foxconn has broken ground on multiple plant sites across India, but its $20 billion joint venture with Vedanta will be one of the largest.
The split comes as US and Chinese leaders and business leaders tread an uneasy and often dangerous path between acknowledging codependence and harshly reprimanding each other.
The U.S. government and big tech companies are beginning to openly recognize China’s technological progress and manufacturing dominance as major threats to national security. Some U.S. companies, long victims of Chinese state-licensed industrial espionage, are reassessing their operations in China as part of so-called “risk aversion.”
Foxconn continues to build other factories across India, including one each in Telangana and Bengaluru.