President Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. will impose a 25% tariff on goods imported from India, plus unspecified penalties for purchasing Russian oil that’s helped fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The announcement comes ahead of a Friday deadline that Mr. Trump has set for tariffs to take effect on nations that don’t reach new trade agreements with his administration. He said the deadline “stands strong” and “will not be extended.”
Dozens of countries could face tariffs as high as 20%, much higher than the already elevated 10% levies that Mr. Trump announced in April.
The president said the increased tariffs on India are necessary because the levies it has imposed on U.S. goods have made the cost of doing business with New Delhi too expensive.
“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 nonmonetary trade barriers of any country,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He also said India will face the penalty for its reliance on Russian energy and military equipment, purchases that Moscow has used to keep money flowing in while being hit with steep economic sanctions and waging its war.
Indians “have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and they are Russia’s largest buyer of energy along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to stop the killing in Ukraine,” Mr. Trump wrote.
India’s new 25% rate would be slightly lower than the 26% rate that Mr. Trump threatened during his April 2 “Liberation Day” event at the White House. Yet it’s still a dramatic increase from 2.4%, which was the average tariff rate applied to Indian imports in recent years.
The U.S. has a $45.7 billion trade deficit with India. The Trump administration repeatedly warned India about his high average tariffs on certain products, including 38% on agricultural goods, with rates hitting 45% on vegetable oil and around 50% on apples and corn.
India is one of the top sources of imports for American consumers and companies, with $90 billion of goods flowing into the U.S. from India last year. It was one of the world’s top sources of smartphones after Apple shifted production away from China to avoid high tariffs and geopolitical conflicts.
Apple exported $17 billion of iPhones from India last year, according to data from the company.
Other products imported from India include chemicals, plastics, leather goods, agricultural products and metals.
In 2022, India applied an average tariff rate of 5.2% on U.S. goods. Oil, cement, stone, glass and machinery rank as India’s top purchases from the U.S.