India is very high tariff nation: US President Donald Trump

New York/Washington: India is a very high tariff nation, US President Donald Trump has said as he reiterated that reciprocal tariffs on countries that impose levies on American goods will kick in on April 2.   

“And the big one will be on April 2, when reciprocal tariffs, so if India or China, or any of the countries that really…India is a very high tariff nation," he said.

"I'll tell you what's a high tariff nation - it's Canada. Canada charges us 250 per cent for our milk product and other products, and a tremendous tariff with lumber and things as such. And yet we don't need their lumber. We have more lumber than they do. We don't need Canada's lumber,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday as he signed some executive orders.

Trump also said right now, the tariffs are “temporary" and "small ones” but “the predominant tariffs” that will be reciprocal in nature, will start from April 2 and they will be a “big game changer for our country.

“Because we've been ripped off by every country in the world, and now whatever they charge us, they charge us 150-200 per cent (and) we charge them nothing. So whatever they charge us, we're going to charge them, and there'll be no getting out of it. So we look forward to April 2. I've been looking forward to that date for a long time. And that'll be something very big,” Trump said.

This is the second time in as many days that Trump has remarked about India’s tariffs.

In his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, the first of his second term in the White House, Trump criticized the high tariffs charged by India and other countries and termed them as “very unfair”.

Addressing lawmakers from the US Capitol, Trump had announced that reciprocal tariffs will kick in next month.

“If you don’t make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff and in some cases, a rather large one. Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries," Trump had said.

"On average, the European Union, China, Brazil, India, Mexico and Canada — have you heard of them? And countless other nations charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them,” Trump had said.

“It’s very unfair. India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100 per cent," he had said.

In the past, Trump has called India a “tariff king" and a "big abuser”.

During a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House last month, Trump said that India has “been very strong on tariffs”.

“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," he had said.

Trump had said that the US trade deficit with India is almost $100 billion, and he and Modi 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." Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is in Washington for trade talks with his US counterpart Howard Lutnick. As per US estimates, the US' total goods trade with India was an estimated $ 129.2 billion in 2024. US goods exports to India in 2024 were $ 41.8 billion, up 3.4 per cent ($ 1.4 billion) from 2023. US goods imports from India totalled $ 87.4 billion in 2024, up 4.5 per cent ($ 3.7 billion) from 2023.

The US goods trade deficit with India was $45.7 billion in 2024, a 5.4 per cent increase ($2.4 billion) over 2023.