US President Donald Trump has promised to impose reciprocal tariffs from April 2 on most of America’s trading partners, including India, for “having trade policies that are unfair to Americans”.
In his address to a Joint Session of the US Congress on Tuesday, the president said that the reciprocal tariffs will commence April 2.
Trump criticised the high tariffs charged by India and other countries including China.
“Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries. On average, the European Union, China, Brazil, India, – Mexico and Canada – Have you heard of them -and countless other nations charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them. It’s very unfair,” Trump said.
“India charges us tariffs higher than 100 per cent, China’s average tariff on our products is twice what we charge them and South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher. This is happening by friends and foe. The system is not fair to the US; it never was. On April 2, reciprocal tariffs kick in. Whatever they tax us, we will tax them,” Trump said.
He further asserted that if the trading partners “use non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we will use non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market”.
“We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before” and noted that “we’ve been ripped off for decades by every country on earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” the President added.
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This comes just weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US raised hopes among Indian industry that a trade deal with America could help New Delhi secure relief from sweeping tariffs in exchange for market access for US products in India. India had proactively slashed tariffs on a number of items such as bourbon whiskey even before negotiations began.
