Trump vows tariffs on nations that 'harm' US; names India, China as high-tariff countries

Washington: The United States will impose tariffs on the countries that "harm" America, President Donald Trump has said, as he named China, India and Brazil as high-tariff countries.

“We're going to put tariffs on outside countries and outside people that really mean harm to us. Well, they mean us harm, but they basically want to make their country good,” Trump told House Republicans at a Florida retreat on Monday, the first after he became the president for the second term last week.

“Look at what others do. China is a tremendous tariff maker, and India and Brazil and so many other countries. So we're not going to let that happen any longer because we're going to put America first,” he said.

He said that the US will establish a "very fair system where money is going to come into our coffers and America is going to be very rich again", adding that it will happen "very quickly".

Trump underscored that it was time for the US to return to the system that made it "richer and more powerful than ever before.” Referring to his inaugural speech last week, Trump said: “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens." "Under the American first economic model, as tariffs on other countries go up, taxes on American workers and businesses will come down and massive numbers of jobs and factories will come home,” he said.

Earlier, Trump has already talked about slapping “100 per cent tariffs” on the BRICS grouping, a bloc that includes India as well.

During his address, Trump asked companies to come and set up manufacturing units in the US if they wished to avoid tariffs.

“If you want to stop paying the taxes or the tariffs, you have to build your plant right here in America. That's what's going to happen at record levels. We're going to have more plants built in the next short period of time than anybody ever envisioned before because the incentive is going to be there because they have no tariff whatsoever,” he said.

The president said that the US will support companies building plants in America, particularly in industries like pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and steel.

Trump added that his administration would also be placing tariffs on steel, aluminium, copper and other materials required by the US military. “We have to bring production back to our country. There was a time when we made one ship a day, and now we can't build a ship. We don't know what the hell we're doing. It's all gone to other locations and other lands,” he said.

“To further return production to the United States, we're going to environmentally free up our rare earth minerals. We have some of the best rare earth anywhere in the world, but we're not allowed to use it because the environmentalists got there first,” said the president in his address.