Trump threatens India with reciprocal tariffs – The Tribune

US President-elect Donald Trump has reiterated his intention to impose reciprocal tariffs if India “continued to impose high tariff” on import of certain American products.

Speaking to the media in the US on Tuesday, Trump named India, Brazil and China among countries that were imposing high tariffs on certain US products.

He said, “The word reciprocal is important… if India charges us 100 per cent, do we charge them nothing for the same?”

Citing an example, Trump said, “You know, they send in a bicycle and we send them a bicycle. They charge us 100 and 200 per cent tariff. India charges a lot. Brazil charges a lot. If they want to charge us, that’s fine, but we are going to charge them the same thing.”

When asked about a potential trade agreement with China, he said, “If they tax us, we tax them the same amount.”

Trumps’ Commerce Secretary pick Howard Lutnick said “reciprocity” was something that was going to be a key topic for the Trump administration.

This is the second “threat” Trump has issued in the past three weeks on economic matters that is related to India or the groupings of which India is a part.

On November 30, Trump threatened to impose high tariffs on BRICS countries if they tried to move away from the dollar and carried out international trade using a separate BRICS currency.