(Image source from: Politico)
President Donald Trump has criticized India's "big tariffs" on American paper products and the iconic Harley-Davidson bikes, saying the United States has been losing billions of dollars to countries like India, China, and Japan.
Addressing a Republican political rally in Wisconsin state's Green Bay city on Sunday, Trump alleged that every country has been ripping off America for years.
The President has repeatedly claimed that India is a "tariff king" and imposes "tremendously high" tariffs on American products.
"For so many decades, we've been losing tens of billions of dollars to China and Japan, and India, and name any country and we lost, but we're not losing anymore," he said to his cheering supporters.
Trump said that the U.S. was being charged high tariffs on foreign paper products. "We charge other countries zero tariffs on foreign paper products, but when Wisconsin paper companies export it abroad... China charged us big tariffs, India charged us big tariffs, Vietnam charges us massive tariffs," Trump said.
He claimed that people of the U.S. demanded a government that puts America first. "And we're doing that with China, we're doing that with India, we're doing that with Japan, we're doing it with a great new trade deal, that hopefully will get approved in the house," Trump said.
At a White House event announcing his support for reciprocal tax earlier this year, Trump had said that he was satisfied with the Indian decision to reduce the import tariff on high-end Harley-Davidson motorcycles from 100 percent to 50 percent.
Trump said that he called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. "Look at Harley-Davidson. I met with them three years ago; they would tell me (it is) tough to do business in certain kinds. I asked 'How you're doing in India?' and they said, 'Oh, we don't do any business'. So, India charged a 100 per cent tariff on Harley-Davidson, but when they send their motorcycles and they may come to us, we charge them nothing," Trump said.
"So I called up Prime Minister Modi, I said (it is) unfair, he cut it 50 percent... But that's not good enough because of look, it's 50 percent to nothing. And what we're doing is changing all of that stuff, changing all of that rapidly," he added.
India is urging for exemption from the high duty imposed by the United States on certain steel and aluminum products, resumption of export benefits to certain domestic products under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programme and greater market access for its products from agriculture, automobile, automobile components, and engineering sectors.
On the other hand, the U.S. is demanding greater market access through a cut in import duties for its agriculture goods, dairy products, medical devices, IT and communication items. India has stated that it would be hard for them to cut duties on IT products.
India's exports to the U.S. in 2017-18 stood at $47.9 billion, whereas imports were $26.7 billion. The trade balance is in favor of India.
By Sowmya Sangam
