Trump says India has offered zero tariffs on imports from US

New Delhi: India has offered to bring down the taxes on exports from the United States to ‘nothing’, President Donald Trump said on Monday, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to New Delhi after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as attending the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

“It has been totally a one-sided disaster,” Trump posted on Truth Social, alleging that the US companies found it difficult to sell products in India due to the high tariff barriers. He said that India, on the other hand, sold “massive amounts of goods” in the US.

“They (India) have now offered to cut their tariffs (on exports from the US) to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” Trump wrote on ‘Truth Social’. He made the comment on the social media platform as Modi’s participation in the summit of the SCO, a 10-nation bloc led by Moscow and Beijing and perceived as a potential counterweight to NATO, added to the speculation that the strain in New Delhi’s relations with Washington, D.C., over the 50 per cent tariff imposed by the US president on imports from India prompted the South Asian nation to add momentum to its traditional ties with Russia and seek a rapprochement with China despite dispute over boundary in the Himalayas.

Trump's Truth Social post. 

Trump hit out at New Delhi for high tariffs, even as the US embassy posted in X that the partnership between the two would continue to scale new heights and would prove to be “a defining relationship of the 21st century”. “The enduring friendship between our two peoples is the bedrock of our cooperation and propels us forward as we realise the tremendous potential of our economic relationship,” Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said.

With no breakthrough yet on the negotiations on the proposed trade deal between New Delhi and Washington, D.C., Trump had on July 30 announced a 25 per cent tariff on all goods exported by India to the US. He had also slammed New Delhi for buying defence hardware and energy from Russia, despite the former Soviet Union nation’s special military operations in Ukraine. He had followed it up on July 31 by calling the economies of India and Russia ‘dead’. He had then announced on August 6 that an additional 25 per cent duty would be levied on all US imports from India, thus totalling the tariffs at 50 per cent.

Trump’s comment came as he drew flak in the US itself – not only from Democrats but also from his fellow Republicans – for imposing high tariffs on India.

“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest “client,” but we sell them very little,” Trump wrote on the social media platform, adding that the trade ties between the two nations had been a totally one-sided relationship for many decades. “The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one-sided disaster!”

“Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US,” added the 45th and 47th American president.

Nikki Haley, who served as the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations during the Trump 1.0 era in the White House, criticised the decision to impose a 25 per cent additional tariff on India for its purchase of oil from Russia, whereas China, which had been buying hydrocarbons from the former Soviet Union nation in much larger quantities, had so far been able to avoid sanctions. Jake Sullivan, who served as the National Security Advisor to Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, said that Trump might end up pushing India towards China with his high tariffs.

The strains in New Delhi’s relations with Washington, D.C., over Trump’s tariff tirade also cast a shadow of uncertainty over the fate of Quad, a four-nation coalition, which India, Japan, Australia and the US had forged in 2007 and revived in 2017 to counter the hegemonic aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Trump’s comment about New Delhi offering zero tariffs on exports from the US came even as Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal recently said that India would neither bow down nor appear weak, but would strive to capture new markets.