United States President Donald Trump criticised the high tariffs charged by India and other countries, terming them as “very unfair” and announced reciprocal tariffs from April 2 on nations that impose levies on American goods.
Trump made these remarks in an address to the Joint Session of the Congress on Tuesday. It was the first address of his second term in the White House. On January 20, Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the US.
“If you don't make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff and in some cases, a rather large one," Trump said.
"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," Trump said.
"It's very unfair. India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100 per cent."
In February, President Trump said that his administration would “soon” impose reciprocal tariffs on countries such as India and China, reiterating what he had said during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US capital last month.
Trump has made it clear to Prime Minister Modi that India will not be spared from Washington's reciprocal tariffs and emphasised that “nobody can argue with me” on tariff structure.
"China's average tariff on our products is twice what we charge them. And South Korea's average tariff is four times higher. Think of that. Four times higher. And we give so much help militarily and in so many other ways to South Korea. But that's what happens. This is happening by friend and foe," Trump said.
"We've been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” Trump said.
Asserting that this system is "not fair to the United States" and never was, Trump said that reciprocal tariffs will kick in from April 2.
"Whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them. That's reciprocal, back and forth,” Trump said amid applause from Republican lawmakers.
"Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we will do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. There's a lot of that too. They don't even allow us in their market. We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before," Trump said.
He added that "I did it with China, and I did it with others and the Biden administration couldn't do anything about it because it was so much money they couldn't do anything about it."
He added that the US has very large deficits with both Mexico and Canada.
"But even more importantly, they have allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people, destroying families. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. They are in effect receiving subsidies of hundreds of billions of dollars. We pay subsidies to Canada and to Mexico of hundreds of billions of dollars. And the United States will not be doing that any longer. We are not going to do it any longer."
Trump is implementing a 25 per cent additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 per cent additional tariff on imports from China. In a retaliatory action, Canada said that effective March 4, 2025, it is imposing 25 per cent tariffs on USD 30 billion in goods imported from the United States.
Mexico said it will announce reciprocal action on Sunday.
China also announced it will impose additional tariffs of up to 15 per cent on imports of key US farm products.
In the past, Trump has called India “tariff king" and a "big abuser”.
Last month, during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Modi in the White House, Trump had said that India has “been very strong on tariffs”, and “I don't blame them, necessarily, but it's a different way of doing business. It's very hard to sell into India because they have trade barriers, very strong tariffs.”
Trump had noted that as a signal of good faith, Modi had recently announced the reductions to India's “unfair, very strong tariffs” that limit US access into the Indian market very strongly.
"And really, it's a big problem, I must say. India imposes a 30 to 40 to 60 and even 70 per cent tariff on so many of the goods and, in some cases, far more than that. As an example, a 70 per cent tariff on US cars going into India, which makes it pretty much impossible to sell those cars."
Trump had said that the US trade deficit with India is almost USD 100 billion, and Modi and he agreed that “we'll begin negotiations to address the long-running disparities that should have been taken care of over the last four years — but they didn't do that — in the US-India trading relationship, with the goal of signing an agreement."
"And we want — really, we want a certain level playing field, which we really think we're entitled to, and he does also, in fairness, so we're going to work on that very hard," Trump said.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is in Washington for trade talks with his US counterpart Howard Lutnick.
As per US estimates, the US total goods trade with India was an estimated USD 129.2 billion in 2024.
The US goods exports to India in 2024 were USD 41.8 billion, up 3.4 per cent (USD 1.4 billion) from 2023. US goods imports from India totalled USD 87.4 billion in 2024, up 4.5 per cent (USD 3.7 billion) from 2023. The US goods trade deficit with India was USD 45.7 billion in 2024, a 5.4 per cent increase (USD 2.4 billion) over 2023.
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