TOI Correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump continued his fixation with tariffs and India, clubbing New Delhi with countries having far bigger trade surpluses and announcing reciprocal tariffs from April 2, even as the International Chamber of Commerce warned that his move would crash the world economy and lead to 1930s kind of Great Depression.
Trump went on his familiar rant on tariffs in a joint address to the US Congress on Tuesday night that was replete with falsehoods and hyperbole, saying “countless other nations charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them” and reciprocal taxes would bring in “trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”
“It’s very unfair. India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100 percent. China’s average tariff on our products is twice what we charge them….This is happening by friend and foe,” Trump said in a 100-minute speech, the longest ever to the US Congress by a President, and full of self-aggrandizement that his MAGA faithful lapped up and liberal critics excoriated.
Trump’s obsession with India’s tariffs is inexplicable considering New Delhi barely makes the list of top ten US trading partner and its $ 45 billion trade surplus is one-sixth that of China and one-fourth that of Mexico. The US has larger trade deficits with Ireland and Vietnam, and in terms of ratio of exports to imports vis-a-vis US, Indonesia and Thailand rank higher than India.
Yet Trump complained about allies and friendly countries such as South Korea and India ripping off the US, even as China warned that it is ready for any “type of war” after the US President announced reciprocal tariffs, the basis for which is also the purported free flow of the opioid fentanyl into America via Mexico and Canada.
“If the US truly wants to solve the fentanyl issue, then the right thing to do is to consult with China on the basis of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit to address each other’s concerns,” a Chinese spokesperson said on Tuesday, bluntly warning that “If the US has other agenda in mind and if war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.” China’s embassy in Washington DC also reposted the spokesman’s comment on war on social media, even as the Trump dispensation is making nice with Russia while antagonizing its allies and partners.
Mexico too has rejected Trump’s charges that it facilitates cross-border traffic of fentanyl, and turned it around to allege that Mexico itself is suffering from violent crime because of the free flow guns — an article of faith for Trump’s MAGA base — from the US. Canada too has called Trump’s fentanyl smuggling charges “completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false.”
Trump announced that reciprocal tariffs will kick in from April 2 on all countries even as the International Chamber of Commerce expressed “deep concern” that this could be the “start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory,” referring to the high tariffs on foreign goods imported into the US in that decade contributed to a global recession.
The likelihood of a similarly severe blow to the global economy is high, ICC deputy secretary-general Andrew Wilson told the Wall Street Journal, which has characterised Trump’s tariff tirade as “dumb,” a putdown picked up by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “It’s not in my habit to agree with the Wall Street Journal, but Donald, they point out that even though you’re a very smart guy, this is a very dumb thing to do,” Trudeau said, embracing the insulting language typically used by Trump.
The US President also recycled many of his “greatest hits” with the MAGA base including false claims of 21 million people pouring into the US over the past four years, which would have resulted in 6 per cent increase in US population in four years. Even Trump-supporting think tanks estimate that the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US going back decades is around 12 million.
“Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world…because of Joe Biden’s insane and very dangerous open border policies, they are now strongly embedded in our country. But we are getting them out and getting them out fast,” Trump said, even though studies consistently show that immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit crimes at lower rates than US-born citizens.