New Delhi | A day after US President Donald Trump announced that he will raise tariffs on India "very substantially", Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) member Shamika Ravi said the burden of any such hike will fall on low-income American households.
Trump on Tuesday said India has not been a good trading partner and announced that he will raise the tariffs on India "very substantially" over the next 24 hours.
"Trump's tariffs are effectively a tax on cheap goods available from the global markets, the burden of which will fall on low-income American households.
"These tariffs are eventually a transfer from low-income American households to the US government," Ravi said in a social media post on X.
On August 1, Trump signed an executive order titled 'Further Modifying The Reciprocal Tariff Rates', raising tariffs for over five dozen countries, including a steep 25 per cent for India.
The executive order, however, did not mention the "penalty" that Trump had said India will have to pay because of its purchases of Russian military equipment and energy.
Last week, Trump mounted a sharp attack on India and Russia for their close ties and said the two countries can take their "dead economies down together", a remark that prompted New Delhi to say that India is the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Trump had earlier announced a 25 per cent tariff on imports of Indian goods, along with an unspecified "penalty" for buying "vast majority" of Russian military equipment and crude oil.
Declaring that the US has a massive trade deficit with India, Trump had said while "India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the world, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any country.
"Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia's largest buyer of energy, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to stop the killing in Ukraine — All things not good!" Trump had said.
