India will have to pay 10% additional tariff 'If they are in BRICS': Trump
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New Delhi: US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose additional tariff on India if the country continues to be part of BRICS, the geopolitical grouping that the US sees as a threat.
Trump’s assertion comes just days after BRICS held a summit where they expressed concerns at ‘the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures’, calling Trump’s moves ‘illegal and arbitrary’, The Wire reported.
After meting out tariff on 14 countries, Trump told reporters on Tuesday that India would have to pay 10 per cent if the country, which is one of the five founding member of BRICS, continues to be part of the grouping.
‘They (India) have to pay 10 per cent if they are in BRICS, because BRICS was set up to hurt us, to degenerate our dollar, to take it off as a standard. That is okay if they want to play their game, I can play their game too. So anybody that is in BRICS is getting a 10 per cent charge. If they (India), they’re gonna have to pay a 10 per cent tariff,’ Trump reportedly said.
BRICS countries including India following their summit in Rio de Janeiro issued a statement no July 6 criticising Trump’s tariffs.
The meeting attended by PM Modi called out the trend of trade-restrictive practices, pointing to the ‘indiscriminate rising of tariffs and non-tariff measures’ at the risk of reducing global trade, disrupting supply chains while causing ‘uncertainty in the global economy’, The Wire reported.
Taking a question from reporters about the statement issued by BRICS, Trump said that countries challenging dollar will have to ‘pay a big price’, adding that ‘I don’t think any of them is willing to pay that price.’
When asked about India, Trump said that ‘we’re close to making a deal with India’.
While saying that BRICS is not a serious threat, Trump said that the US would not allow the grouping to ‘destroy the dollar’ to allow ‘another country to take over’ to become the standard, ‘we are not gonna lose the standard’.
Trump had earlier warned that countries aligning themselves with ‘the Anti-American policies of BRICS’ would be charged with additional 10 per cent tariff.
