US President Donald Trump has criticised the high tariffs charged by India, China, and other countries, calling it “very unfair”, and has announced reciprocal tariffs, which will commence on April 2.
Trump wants to impose the same tariff on imports from foreign countries as those nations impose on US exports. Specifically about tariffs imposed by India, he said, “India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100 per cent.”
Trump said on March 4 night, in an address to the Joint Session of the Congress, the first of his second term in the White House, “Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries. On [an] 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.”
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 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US capital of Washington DC last month.
Trump made it clear to PM Modi that India would not be spared from America’s reciprocal tariffs. He emphasised that “nobody can argue with me” on the tariff structure.
China’s average tariff on our products is twice… 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. This system is not fair to the United States. It never was.
US President Donald Trump, addressing the US Congress
Trump said in his speech on March 4 that from April 2, reciprocal tariffs would kick in, and whatever “they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them”.
He emphasised, “That’s reciprocal back and forth. 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.”
Then he continued, “They don’t even allow us in their market. We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars that create jobs like we have never seen before. I did it with China, and I did it with others, and the Biden administration couldn’t do anything about it, because there was so much money, they couldn’t do anything about it.”
“We have been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on Earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” said Trump.
