Investing.com - U.S. President Donald Trump has delivered comments on a wide range of topics on Thursday as part on an ongoing tour of the Gulf region, including a potential nuclear deal Iran and Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) operations in India.
Trump has said the U.S. was closing in on a nuclear deal with Iran, adding that Tehran had "sort of" agreed to the terms of an agreement.
"We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace," he said at a business roundtable event in Qatar.
"We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this... there (are) two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way."
U.S. and Iranian negotiators held fresh talks to resolve disputes over Tehran’s nuclear program on Sunday, with officials saying they plan to hold future negotiations. Iran has suggested that it is continuing to enrich uranium.
Meanwhile, Trump said that he has spoken with Apple CEO Tim Cook in a bid to dissuade him from growing production in India.
Trump said he told Cook that he did not want him to be "building in India", adding that "India can take care of themselves, they are doing very well".
Apple, instead, will be moving to increase its production in the United States, Trump said.
With regards to India, Trump said the country had agreed to effectively drop all tariffs on U.S. goods as part of a potential trade deal.
Trump had previously suggested that a ceasefire deal between India and Pakistan following a bout of recent violence between the two was predicated on a trade truce -- a claim that Indian officials have denied.
New Delhi has also said it was willing to slap retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. in response to American duties on steel and aluminum.
Separately, Trump said trade between the U.S. and China "essentially went cold turkey [...] for a period of a month", as Washington looked to correct perceived trade imbalances with Beijing.
He praised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for his work in securing a trade truce with China following high-stakes negotiations last weekend. On Monday, the U.S. and China agreed to lower tit-for-tat tariffs and temporarily delay their respective levies for 90 days. However, analysts have noted that tariffs remain above levels at the beginning of Trump’s second term in power earlier this year.
On the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Trump also suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not travel to talks with Kyiv in Turkey if he were not also in attendance.
"I didn’t think it was possible for Putin to go [to the negotiations in Istanbul] if I’m not there," Trump said.
However, Trump indicated that he would attend the discussions "if it is appropriate", adding that the fighting between Ukraine and Russia needs to stop. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is among those from the U.S. attending, Trump noted.
Putin’s name was not included in a list of representatives the Kremlin said would send to the face-to-face talks, which will be the first since shortly after the outbreak of the conflict in 2022.
It also remained unclear if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend, with the leader saying earlier this week that he was not prepared to speak with anyone from the Russian side apart from Putin.