Trump emphasized the importance of fairness stating that if India imposes a 100 percent tariff on U.S. products the U.S. will reciprocate with the same measure. As President elect Donald Trump outlined his intention to implement reciprocal tariffs on countries including India that impose high duties on American goods.
Speaking to reporters on Monday Trump emphasized that if other countries impose tariffs on U.S. products the U.S. 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 Trump was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
Trump made these comments in response to a question about a potential trade agreement with China but he specifically pointed out India and Brazil as countries that impose high tariffs on certain U.S goods.
Fairness is Key says Donald Trump
During the interaction Trump stressed that fairness is crucial noting that if India charges a 100% tariff on U.S goods the U.S will reciprocate with the same measure.
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 fine but we’re going to charge them the same thing he added during the news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump comments were echoed by Howard Lutnick his nominee for Commerce Secretary.
Lutnick emphasized that reciprocity would be a key aspect of the new administration trade policies. How you treat us is how you should expect to be treated Lutnick stated.
Meanwhile the outgoing Biden administration remarked on Tuesday that it was leaving the India vs U.S. relationship in a very strong place and expressed confidence that it would continue to receive bipartisan support during Donald Trump presidency.
We remain very ambitious about the U.S. vs India relationship. We’ve had significant high level engagement in recent months, including the QUAD summit in Delaware and we expect further high level engagement in the final weeks of the Biden administration Kurt Campbell Deputy Secretary of State said during a conference call in Washington on Tuesday.
