US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has yet again targeted India for steep tariffs on American exports and said that New Delhi has put up a wall against imports but it freely sells everything to the US. In an interview with Axios, Lutnick said India boasts of its 1.4 billion population but does not openly accept America’s agricultural exports.

“India brags that they have 1.4 billion people. Why won’t their 1.4 billion people buy one bushel of U.S. corn? Doesn’t that rub you the wrong way, that they sell everything to us, and they won’t buy our corn?” Lutnick said.

“They put tariffs on everything. So the president says, bring down your tariffs,” he added while justifying President Donald Trump’s 50% duties on Indian exports.

Meanwhile, Lutnick said Trump had a clear policy – “Treat us the way we treat you. Now we’ve got to right years of wrong, so we want a tariff going the other way until we fix this. That’s the president’s model, and you either accept it, or you’re going to have a tough time doing business with the world’s greatest consumers,” he added.

“It’s about fairness. America buys Indian goods freely, but when we want to sell, the walls go up,” he said.

ALSO READ

India, US and trade tussle

The ties between the world’s oldest and largest democracies went sour when President Trump announced 25% tariffs on all Indian goods, and then levied a 25% penalty for buying Russian oil. Lutnick also noted that India was buying discounted Russian oil, which became the bone of contention between New Delhi and Washington.

This comes as the US recently asked the NATO nations to impose heavy sanctions on China to force Russia for Ukraine peace talks. Trump’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska had fuelled fresh hopes in ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, the same has not advanced to a positive stage, despite Trump’s deadline.

He is now back again on using trade to compel Russia to agree to his conditions. One of the reasons, the White House said, for tariffs on India was the continued purchase of Russian oil.

ALSO READ

Trade deal going smooth again?

One of the reasons that the US President went ahead with tariffs on India despite calling PM Narendra Modi his “dear friend”, was the slow progress of the India-US trade deal.

Last week only, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Washington and New Delhi are “not that far apart right now”, hinting at possible softening of stance by America.

After the SCO summit in China, where India-China-Russia discussed Trump’s tariffs, the US President agreed to have lost New Delhi and Moscow to Beijing.