Donald Trump’s message to India over high tariffs: ‘They tax us, we tax them’

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump emphasised that if other nations tax US products, the US will respond in kind.

“Reciprocal. If they tax us, we tax them the same amount. They tax us. We tax them. And they tax us. Almost in all cases, they’re taxing us, and we haven’t been taxing them,” news agency PTI quoted Trump as saying.

Donald Trump made the remarks while responding to a question on a potential trade agreement with China. However, he specifically pointed to India and Brazil, saying these were among countries that impose high tariffs on certain US products.

‘Fairness is key’, says Donald Trump

In his Monday’s interaction, Trump stressed that fairness is key, noting that if India charges a 100% tariff on US goods, the US will do the same in return.

“The word reciprocal is important because if somebody charges us — India, we don’t have to talk about our own — if India charges us 100%, do we charge them nothing for the same? You know, they send in a bicycle and we send them a bicycle,” Trump said.

“They charge us 100 and 200. India charges a lot. Brazil charges a lot. If they want to charge us, that’s fine, but we’re going to charge them the same thing,” Trump said at the news conference at Mar-a-Lago.

Donald Trump’s comments were echoed by Howard Lutnick, his pick for Commerce Secretary.

Lutnick stated that “reciprocity” will be a major focus of the new administration’s trade policies. “How you treat us is how you should expect to be treated,” Lutnick said.

Meanwhile, outgoing Biden administration said on Tuesday it was leaving the India-US relationship “in a very strong place”, and exuded confidence that it will continue to have bipartisan support during the Donald Trump presidency as well.

“We continue to be very ambitious about the US-India relationship. We’ve had very high-level engagement over the course of the last several months with the QUAD summit in Delaware, and we are anticipating a high-level engagement in the last few weeks of the Biden administration,” Kurt Campbell, Deputy Secretary of State, told reporters during a conference call in Washington on Tuesday.