President Donald Trump’s 26% tariffs on imports from India came into full effect on Wednesday morning.
Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs on April 3 in the Rose Garden of the White House as part of his ‘Liberation Day’ announcement event.
The US president had declared that the US would tax nearly all of America’s trading partners at a minimum of 10% and impose steeper rates for countries that he says ran trade surpluses with the US.
Besides India, Trump announced 46% tariffs on Vietnam, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union.
He also announced a tariff of 34% on China which would come on top of 20% levies he imposed on the country earlier this year. Later, he threatened to add another 50% levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s recently promised retaliation.
During his April 3 announcement, Trump had called Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘a great friend’ but added that the country was ‘not treating us right’.
“Their Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) just left (US recently). He is a great friend of mine, but I said to him that ‘you’re a friend of mine, but you’ve not been treating us right’. India charges us 52%, so we will charge them half of that – 26%,” he said.
In response, India said that it is carefully examining the implications of Trump’s announcement and studying the opportunities that may arise due to this development in the American trade policy.
