Tariff king India wants trade talks with US immediately, says Trump
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Trump had earlier slammed India for reported high import tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles
President Trump while unveiling the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), said that India wants to open trade talks with the US immediately.
Calling India a "tariff king", Trump said: "India called us and they say, we want to start negotiations immediately."
On Saturday, Trump had said India does not want him to impose tariffs on Indian products reaching American shores. The US president had accused India of imposing 100 per cent tariffs on US products.
The president had earlier said that India enjoyed a competitive advantage over the US, asserting,"Take India. You talk about free trade. So, let's say they (Indians) charge us 60 per cent tariff on a product. And for the same product when they send it in (America), we charge them nothing. So now I want to charge them 25 per cent or 20 or 10 or something."
Trump had earlier slammed India for reported high import tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles calling it “unfair” even though India had cut import duty by upto 50 per cent.
Addressing a rally on Saturday, the president said he can give an example of other countries which are "brutal" at what they do to the United States. "I could give you (examples of) others that are brutal, just brutal what they do to us, how they take advantage of the stupidity. We never even had people negotiate, they just do whatever they want," the president told the rally.
The United States is India's biggest trading partner with two-way trade pegged at over $100 billion a year. India had earlier imposed retaliatory tariff on 29 US products worth $235 million after the US decided to impose import duties on Indian steel and aluminium.
The US is already engaged in an escalating trade war with China with both sides imposing tit-for-tat tariffs worth over $60 billion.