India’s imposition of recent retaliatory tariffs on US goods is not acceptable and they must be withdrawn, the US president Donald Trump said Wednesday in a tweet in view of escalating trade tensions between the US and India. He expressed his willingness to hold talks on the contentious issue of trade tariffs with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of G20 summit in Japan this Friday. This will be the first meeting of Modi with the US President Trump in his second tenure as the Prime Minister of India.
“I look forward to speaking with Prime Minister Modi about the fact that India, for years having put very high Tariffs against the United States, just recently increased the Tariffs even further. This is unacceptable and the Tariffs must be withdrawn!,” Trump tweeted today ahead of his meeting with Modi in G20 Summit. Trump has many times called India a tariff king.
India in June imposed retaliatory tariffs on 28 US goods including apples, almonds and walnuts after the US ended trade exemptions for India from June under the generalised system of preferences or GSP for India, which allowed tariff-free exports of up to $5.6 billion.
In March 2018, the US had imposed tariffs on imports of aluminium and steel from India at the rate of 10 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. India postponed the imposition of trade duties in a bid to iron out its differences with the world’s largest economy the US in a trade negotiation.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met PM Modi and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar in the national capital on Wednesday and discussed various aspects of US-India relationship. He said that the US needs better trade access.