Just one day after hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, US President Donald Trump has signalled that he will definitely be imposing tariffs on the country.
Talking to Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Trump, accompanied by Elon Musk, clearly said that he will charge the same tariffs that India charges the US.
“Every country in the world takes advantage of us, and they do it with tariffs. They make it impossible for him [Musk] to sell a car, practically, in, as an example, India,” Donald Trump told Hannity.
“I told Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi yesterday, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging.’ Modi goes, ‘No, no, I don’t like that.’ ‘No, no, whatever you charge, I’m going to charge.’ I’m doing that with every country,” he said in the interview.
Elon Musk, owner of the electric vehicle brand Tesla, then chimed in to say that “Auto imports are 100 percent” in India on foreign manufacturer cars.
Trump then said that India asks car manufacturers to make their cars in India, a practice he stressed was “unfair” to the American economy.
Trump’s proposal is to impose the same tariff on India as India does on American products. “Nobody can argue with me,” President Trump insisted. “If I said 25 per cent, they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ I don’t say that anymore… because I say, ‘Whatever they charge, we’ll charge.’ And you know what? They stop.”
