Shaun
On US President Trump imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on India over Russian oil purchases, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said “I don’t think that’s particularly good news for us and that takes our total tariffs to 50 per cent then that’s going to make our goods unaffordable to a lot of people in America and in particularly when you’re looking at these percentages you have to compare them with the tariffs being levied on some of our competitors.”
“I’m afraid that if you look at people like Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, even Bangladesh and Pakistan have lower tariffs than us, then ultimately people will not be buying goods from us in America if they can buy them cheaper elsewhere. So that’s not very good for our exports to America. This means we need to very seriously diversify to other countries and other markets that may be interested in what we have to offer. We now have an FTA with the UK. We are talking to the EU. There are many countries in which hopefully we would be able to, but in the short term, it is definitely a blow,” he added.
On being asked, ‘Indian officials have said that there are other countries that are buying Russian oil, like China, for instance. Why are you singling India out for these additional sanctions’, US President Donald Trump says, “It’s only been 8 hours. So let’s see what happens. You’re going to see a lot more…You’re going to see so much secondary sanctions.”
US President Donald Trump said that Washington and Moscow have made a “lot of progress” in working towards ending the Ukraine War and speculated the punitive tariff he imposed on India for buying Russian oil may have something to do with it.
“We put a 50 per cent tariff on India,” he said on Wednesday (local time), “I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but we’ve had very productive talks today” (with Russia).
He announced a 25 per cent tariff on India in his general tariff war last week, and on Wednesday morning, he announced an extra 25 per cent tariff for buying Russian oil.
Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade official, said the latest tariff places the country among the most heavily taxed US trading partners and far above rivals such as China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
“The tariffs are expected to make Indian goods far costlier with the potential to cut exports by around 40%-50% to the U.S.,” he said. Srivastava said Trump’s decision was “hypocritical” because China bought more Russian oil than India did last year.
