United States President Donald Trump on Monday hinted at imposing new tariffs on some agricultural products that Washington imports, including rice from India and fertilisers from Canada, Bloomberg reported.
He made the remark during a meeting with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers from agrarian states and farmers at the White House, where he also announced a $12 billion (Rs 1.08 trillion) aid package for American farmers affected.
Some farmers claimed during the meeting that cheaper imports were making it difficult for their products to compete in the marketplace, Bloomberg reported.
Trump said that he would “take care” of the alleged dumping of Indian rice into US markets.
“They shouldn’t be dumping,” Trump said. “I heard that from others. You can’t do that.”
He then asked US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Why is India allowed to do that [“dumping rice into the US”]? They have to pay tariffs. Do they have an exemption on rice?”
Bessent replied: “No, sir. We’re still working on their trade deal.”
Trump responded: “They should not be dumping [rice]… They cannot do that.”
The president also suggested that he could target fertiliser imported from Canada in order to encourage domestic production of fertilisers.
“A lot of it does come in from Canada, and so we’ll end up putting very severe tariffs on that, if we have to, because that’s the way you want to bolster here. And we can do it here. We can all do that here,” Trump said.
US tariffs on India
As of now, the combined US tariff rate for India is at 50%. A 25% so-called reciprocal duty was imposed on August 7, followed by an additional 25% punitive levy on August 27.
These punitive tariffs were introduced as part of Washington’s pressure campaign against countries that continued to purchase discounted crude oil from Russia amid the war on Ukraine.
After the punitive levies were announced, New Delhi had said it was “extremely unfortunate” that the US had chosen to impose additional tariffs on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.
Recently, however, trade talks between the two countries have gained fresh momentum.
A team of Indian officials led by Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal visited Washington DC in October to hold trade negotiations with the US. In September, Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal had also led a delegation to New York for trade talks.
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