Trump says India has agreed to reduce tariffs

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump said India has agreed to reduce its tariffs "way down," reiterating his claim that the country imposes high tariffs on American products, making trade difficult.

Speaking from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said the US has been economically and financially "ripped off" by several countries, including India.

"Canada, Mexico, and then you just go right down the line. India charges us massive tariffs, massive. You can't even sell anything into India. It's almost restrictive. It is restrictive. We do very little business inside," Trump said.

"They've agreed, by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody's finally exposing them for what they've done. And the same thing with China, same thing with a lot of other countries, and the EU has been a terrible abuser of this country,” he added.

Trump's remarks followed India commerce minister Piyush Goyal’s visit to the US for trade talks with his counterpart Howard Lutnick. It was the third time this week that Trump had criticised India’s tariffs.

On Thursday, Trump described India as a "very high-tariff nation" and reiterated that the US will impose reciprocal tariffs on countries that charge levies on American goods starting 2 April.

Earlier, in his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump called the tariffs imposed by India and other countries “very unfair” and announced that reciprocal tariffs would take effect next month.

In the past, Trump has called India a “tariff king" and a "big abuser." Last month, during a joint press conference with prime minister Narendra Modi at the White House, Trump had said India was “very strong on tariffs.”

"I don't blame them, necessarily, but it's a different way of doing business. It's very hard to sell into India because they have trade barriers, very strong tariffs," he said at the time.

On Friday, India said it was working on strengthening trade ties with the US, including reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers under a bilateral trade agreement.

During Modi’s visit to the US last month, both sides announced plans to negotiate a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in New Delhi. He added that Goyal’s discussions in the US focused on advancing talks on the trade pact.

"Our objective through the BTA is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade across the goods and services sector, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries," Jaiswal said.

(With inputs from PTI)