Trump: India offered zero tariffs for US goods; MEA contests, calls it premature 

India has refuted claims made by US President Donald Trump that New Delhi offered him a trade deal with zero tariffs for American goods. Dismissing the statement by Trump as premature, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, “Any trade deal has to be mutually beneficial; it has to work for both countries. That would be our expectation from the trade deal.”

Jaishankar also said, “Between India and the US, trade talks have been going on. These are complicated negotiations. Nothing is decided till everything is…Until that is done, any judgment on it would be premature,” he told the news agency ANI. While India and the US are engaged in trade talks, a trade agreement is yet to be finalised by the two countries.

Meanwhile, Trump also made news by asking tech giant Apple not to make its products in India. Trump, while speaking from Doha in Qatar, said, “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I said, ‘Tim, you’re my friend, I’ve treated you very good, you’re coming here (in the US) with a $500 billion announcement, and now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.”

In his remarks, Trump had added, “You can build in India if you want to take care of India, because India is one of the highest tariff nations in the world.”

His remarks against India were in contrast to his approach with China. Trump had ramped up tariffs and counter-tariffs on China to the point where they were 145% by 11th April. China, in turn, had imposed tariffs on US goods up to 125% for goods entering China. In this tit-for-tat game China played cool. On May 12, the two sides came to an agreement by which tariffs for goods from China would fall to 30%, down from 145%, for the next 90 days. China also agreed to slash tariffs for US products from 125% to 10%.

For its part, Apple began diversifying away from China to India to overcome these uncertainties, until Trump began targeting India as well. His goal is to get Apple back in the US to manufacture its products there. Trump’s approach has been to marry “industrial policy” with his tariff policy to ensure that manufacturing returns to the US. This is a goal that many trade economists, as well as industrial experts, have said is easier said than done. For one, Apple’s supply chains for almost all the parts of its flagship iPhones, laptops and other products are located in Asia.

India has wooed Apple and other manufacturers to locate production to India and in the coming years it is expected that a quarter of all the phones that Apple manufactures will be made in India. India’s Production Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme has sought to encourage investment in key industrial sectors. By late 2024, investments around $18.7 billion had been undertaken, leading to the production of goods valued at $163 billion.

Donald TrumpIndo-US relationsMEAS Jaishankartrade tariffzero tariffs