The TOI Correspondent from Washington:Trump tariffs are poised to torment the world. The US President on Sunday confirmed he will be imposing a uniform global tariff (basically taxes or duty on all imports into the US) on all countries — with no exceptions — on Wednesday April 2, which he has characterized as “Liberation Day.”
“We would start with all countries, so let’s see what happens,” Trump told reporters onboard the presidential aircraft, days after teasing a prospect that he “may give a lot of countries breaks” and saying “it’s going to work out very well” with New Delhi even though India is “one of the highest tariffing nations in the world.”
Rejecting reports that there may be exceptions or reciprocal tariffs for 10 or 15 countries, dubbed the “dirty fifteen” by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump said “We’ve been talking about all countries – no cutoffs.”
Trump’s universal tariff threat came despite a key US diplomat, deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, predicting that a “golden age” for ties between US and India is coming up ahead while indicating some progress in trade talks between the two sides in New Delhi last week aimed at arriving at a bilateral trade agreement.
Trump aides indicated that there could be an across the board 20 per cent tariffs on all imports into US, regardless of product or origin in an effort to either compel countries to either lower their tariffs or pony up taxes which the US President has said will fill American coffers and make its people “even richer.”
At a broader level, Trump has argued that tariffs, an archaic word for taxes, will either fetch “billions and billions” of dollars for Washington or force countries to move (or return) manufacturing to the US. In a chat with reporters, he singled out pharmaceuticals — without specifically mentioning India — as one sector where he did not want the US to depend on any country, as it had to do during Covid.
New Delhi has an average trade-weighted tariff of around 12 per cent for imports from US, with some products taxed 50 per cent to 100 per cent compared to Washington’s 2.2 per cent on imports from India.