New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump said India has agreed to cut its tariffs “way down” as he reiterated his claim that the country charges America massive tariffs that make it difficult to sell products there.
“Our country, from an economic standpoint and financial standpoint and a trade standpoint, has been absolutely ripped off by almost every country in the world,” Trump said in remarks from the Oval Office on Friday.
“Canada, Mexico and then you just go right down the line. India charges us massive tariffs, massive, you can’t even sell anything into India. It’s almost, it’s almost restrictive. It is restrictive. We do very little business inside,” he said.
“They’ve agreed, by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody’s finally exposing them for what they’ve done. And the same thing with China, same thing with a lot of other countries, and the EU has been a terrible abuser of this country,” Trump added.
Trump’s comments came following Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s visit to the US for trade talks with his counterpart Howard Lutnick.
This was the third time this week that Trump has criticised the high tariffs charged by India.
On Thursday, Trump said India is a very high-tariff nation and reiterated that reciprocal tariffs on countries that impose levies on American goods will kick in on April 2.
In his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, the first of his second term in the White House, Trump criticised the high tariffs charged by India and other countries and termed them as “very unfair”.
Addressing lawmakers from the US Capitol, Trump announced that reciprocal tariffs will kick in next month.
In the past, Trump has called India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser”.
Last month, during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House, Trump said that India has “been very strong on tariffs”.
“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,” he had said.
India on Friday said it is looking at deepening trade ties with the US including by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers under a bilateral trade agreement.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last month, both sides announced plans to negotiate a mutually beneficial, multi-sector Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in New Delhi.
Commerce Minister Goyal was in the US and met his counterparts and the two governments are in the process of advancing discussions on a multi-sector bilateral trade pact, he said.
“Our objective through the BTA is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade across the goods and services sector, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries,” Jaiswal added.
