India to face 26% tariffs as Trump announces 'discounted' reciprocal taxes

US President Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump unveiled global reciprocal tariffs at an event at the White House. Donald Trump held up a chart while speaking, showing the United States would charge a 34%  tax on imports from China, a 20% tax on imports from the European Union, 25% on South Korea, 26% on India,  24% on Japan and 32% on Taiwan.

On India, the chart showed that the country charged 52 per cent tariffs on the US, “including currency manipulation and trade barriers”, and America would now charge India “discounted reciprocal tariffs” of 26 per cent.

“India, very, very tough. Very, very tough. The Prime Minister just left. He's a great friend of mine, but I said, ‘You're a friend of mine, but you’re not treating us right.’ They charge us 52 per cent. You have to understand, we charge them almost nothing, for years and years and decades, and it was only seven years ago, when I came in, we started with China and we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China in tariffs,” Trump said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Washington DC in February, less than a month after Trump took the oath of office and began his second term in the White House as President.

In the past, Trump has called India the “tariff king” and a "big abuser". During a joint press conference with Modi in the White House on 13th February, 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 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.” In announcing the tariffs, Trump said America is being “very kind” to the countries and will be charging them approximately half of the levies they impose on US goods.

“For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers, and other forms of cheating. And because we are being very kind, we’re a kind people, very kind… we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us. So the tariffs will not be fully reciprocal. I could have done that, yes, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries who didn’t want to do that.” “It’s going to be Liberation Day in America, and it’s going to be a day that hopefully you’re going to look back in years to come and say, ‘You know, he was right. This has turned out to be one of the most important days in the history of our country,’” Trump said as he concluded his remarks.

*With Agency Inputs