US President Donald Trump has said that India now wanted to cut its tariffs “way down” as the US had exposed what ‘it has done’.
“… India charges us massive tariffs. Massive. You can’t even sell anything in India. It is restrictive. We do very little business inside,” Trump said in an address shared by the White House on Friday.
While declaring that India had agreed to cut its tariffs, Trump did not go into specifics. “They have agreed, by the way; they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody is finally exposing them for what they have done…,” the US President said.
Trump’s remarks would be of great concern to India which had been hoping to avert the US President’s reciprocal tariffs by forging a mutually beneficial bilateral trade agreement.
Bringing down tariffs in goods to US levels would be extremely difficult for India as its tariffs on US goods are at a much higher 15.3 per cent than US tariffs on Indian products at around 3.83 per cent (2022).
Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal just concluded his visit to Washington DC, where he held meetings with his counterparts, including US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on the BTA that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump had agreed to work on when they met last month.
The BTA is now looking increasingly challenging with the US finally sharing what it expected from the pact.
Lutnick, in an interview to an Indian media group on Friday, said that the US expected a “macro, large scale, broad-based trade agreement”, that would also include agriculture.
“It is time to do something big, something grand… Something that connects India and US together. Something broad scale, not product by product. Let us bring India’s tariff policy towards America down. And America will invite India in to have an extraordinary opportunity and relationship with us,” he said.
For India, reducing tariffs in some agricultural products, like poultry and dairy, could be the red line that is not to be crossed.
Earlier, Trump said he was looking forward to April 2 when the US would apply reciprocal tariffs on `high tariff charging’ countries, including India.
The US is India’s top export destination. India’s trade surplus with the US was at around $35 billion in FY 24 as it exported goods worth $77.5 billion.