With his decree to impose reciprocal tariffs with the rest of the countries, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, seeks to reduce the country's budget deficit. The measure is “fair to all,” he said.
US President Donald Trump adopted on Thursday what he could become his most important extent to international trade at the beginning of his second term.
Trump, who signed a memorandum of reciprocal tariffs, told a group of journalists in the Oval office that “if you make your product in the United States, there are no tariffs.”
The objective is to reduce the country's budget deficit, which is estimated to approach 2,000 million dollars.
The president added that the measure “is fair to all. No other country may complain. ”
Trump ordered Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, his candidates for Secretary of Commerce and Commercial Representative of the United States, respectively, to direct teams to calculate new taxes on imports from United States commercial partners.
To evaluate the amounts, they must take into account the tariff rates of other countries, the industry subsidies, the value -added taxes (which are common in the European Union), the regulations and the undervaluation of the currencies.
The EU Value Added Tax is the “example” of unfair trade, journalists Peter Navarro, the president's main advisor for trade on Thursday.
Modi visit
Trump signed the document just hours before welcoming the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House.
India is expected to be one of the countries most affected by the measure. India has relatively high tariff and non -tariff barriers in numerous US exports. He has faced Washington pressure to reduce its 100 % tariff on nuts, 70 % tax on apples and 60 % import tax on dairy products.
Other sectors include smartphones, pork and poultry and medical devices. India reduced a 100 % tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, an iconic brand deeply rooted in the economy of the state of the western Wisconsin, 50 % in 2018.
The two countries announced on Thursday an energy agreement to make the United States the main oil and gas supplier to India.
Together with Modi, Trump said at a press conference on Thursday night that he would pave the way for the United States The commercial deficit of almost 50,000 million dollars from the United States with India.
“Prime Minister Modi and I agreed that we would begin negotiations to address long -standing disparities,” Trump said.
Modi said he and Trump have established a “objective of more than double our bilateral trade to reach 500,000 million dollars by 2030. Our teams will work to conclude a mutually beneficial commercial agreement very soon.”
In response to a journalist's question about reciprocal tariffs, Trump confirmed that India would also be the subject of tariffs.
“What India charges, we charge it,” he said.
Some high -ranking government officials in New Delhi have suggested to find a way to appease the US president in the midst of the concern that he could negotiate a large -range commercial agreement with the neighbor and rival of India, China, according to Aparna Panda, director of the initiative on the future of India and southern Asia of the Hudson Institute.
If Trump and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, came to forge a high -range commercial pact, “India could face a double challenge: on the commercial/economic front and in the general strategic front,” Panda told the Voice of America Thursday.
“India is a country against which Trump has charged in the past, although I do not think it is a particular obsession of his as China, because China is an important strategic competitor of the United States. Or as are Canada and Mexico, because they are the bordering countries, ”according to Milan Vaishnav, director of the Southern Asia program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Since he assumed the position on January 20 for his second non -consecutive term as president, Trump has acted rapidly in the commercial front. He imposed, and then suspended in the midst of new negotiations, 25 % general tariffs on almost all products from the two continental neighbors in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
He imposed a 10 % fixed tariff on all Chinese products, which led Beijing to respond with tariffs between 10 % and 15 % to crude oil, liquefied natural gas, agricultural machinery and some other US products. Economists say that tariffs cover around 450,000 million dollars in Chinese products, while Chinese tariffs affect between 15,000 and 20,000 million dollars in American products.
Trump characterized his actions as a way of pressing these three countries to make more to stop the flow of fentanyl synthetic opioid to the United States. He has also blamed Canada and Mexico for his lack of rigor when it comes to preventing migrants from crossing their borders to the United States.
Earlier this week, Trump announced that, as of March, all imports of steel and aluminum will be taxed with a minimum of 25 %, a measure that, according to analysts, could significantly increase the sales prices in the dealerships in the dealerships of Automobiles of North America.
“Stanflation Shock”
Analysts say that Trump's tariff measures will damage the growth of the US economy this year.
“The tariffs teach a modest stagging shock to an economy,” according to a report published Thursday by the Wells Fargo financial service provider. “The US economy entered 2025 with considerable impulse, but we hope that real GDP growth will slow down the next quarters as the effects of tariffs on prices erosize the growth of real income, which will affect the Growth of real consumer spending. “
Peter Harrell, who was appointed jointly for the National Security Council and the National Economic Council of the White House in the previous administration of President Joe Biden, said Trump “promised us that he would be a 'tariff man' and he is certainly complying with it” .
“I think this is just a part of the tariffs that we will probably see” in the coming months, Harrell said Thursday morning in “The Capital Cable”, a live program of the Korean chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
These actions or their threat give the Trump administration to have “a tariff bazuca ready to shoot,” said Harrell, currently non -resident me Carnegie.
In the same live broadcast, Philip Luck, director of the CSIS economic program, warned that Trump's “strength of the United States” will result in the Americans paying “really high costs” due to the retaliation actions of the commercial partners of Washington. If the president's goal is to use such commercial actions in part to increase cash coffers, tariff revenues are approximately 1.5 % of government income, “so it is tiny,” Luck said.
The United States is in a dominant position as the largest and well -integrated economy in the global commercial system, which gives it accumulated influence for a period of 80 years, but Trump's strategy to reduce downward tariffs in the coming months It is a measure that can be very difficult to implement. Trump's actions could waste that good will, Luck said.
“We have been a reliable partner for a long period of time,” he said, and the United States traditionally establishes tariffs through negotiations involving international groups such as the World Trade Organization.
“There is a lot of anxiety, on the edge of panic in South Korea,” because Trump, immediately in his second term, is using tariffs for non-economic reasons, said Yeo Han-Koo, a senior member of the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
“Those responsible for US policies really need to see the strategic angle” in the midst of regional competition with China and how they can collaborate with Tokyo and Seoul, Yeo suggested, who as South Korean Trade Minister coinciding with Trump's first mandate He was at the negotiating table against US officials.
Naval construction, civil nuclear energy and biopharmaceutical products are three sectors in which the United States, Japan and South Korea could cooperate to help counteract the growing commercial and military influence of Beijing, Yeo suggested.
(With the collaboration of Iram Abbasi, of the URDU service of the VOA and information of The Associated Press)