“Our country will be woke no longer,” Mr. Trump said in his joint address to the U.S. Congress.
In his first major address to Congress since assuming the presidency, President Donald Trump declared, “We are just getting started.”
Just weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US raised expectations within India’s business community for a potential trade agreement that could ease tariff pressures, President Donald Trump once again took aim at India’s high tariff rates.
Speaking before a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump signaled that trade negotiations might not lead to tariff relief for India, particularly regarding the reciprocal tariffs set to take effect on April 2. He specifically criticized the auto sector, highlighting that “India charges us 100 per cent tariffs; the system is not fair to the US, it never was. On April 2, reciprocal tariffs kick in. Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they use non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we will use non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market.”
India had taken preemptive steps to reduce tariffs on several products, including bourbon whiskey, in anticipation of negotiations. However, efforts to mitigate the impact of these tariffs are still underway. On Monday, Commerce Minister
arrived in the US to meet with Jamieson Greer, the new United States Trade Representative (USTR), who is responsible for implementing Trump’s tariff strategy. Greer, having served in Trump’s first administration, played a key role in the trade policies targeting China, which indirectly benefited India’s electronics sector.
During his address, Trump also pointed out that for years, other nations had imposed significantly higher tariffs on American goods, arguing that it was now the US’s turn to reciprocate. He accused countries like China, Brazil, India, and the European Union of maintaining disproportionate tariffs against the US, describing the current trade landscape as fundamentally “unfair.”