New Delhi: India is not a ‘tariff king’ and it has all the right to take appropriate measures to protect the interest of specific sectors like agriculture, international trade experts have said.
Rejecting the US allegation that India’s import duties are one of the highest in the world, experts said that several developed countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, European Union, and America maintain “extremely high” tariffs primarily on agriculture products.
The US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that India is a “tariff king” and imposes “tremendously high” import duties on American goods.
Biswajit Dhar, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that the US allegations are completely unfounded. “In fact, the US import duties on several of their products are quite high such as on tobacco it is about 350% and 164% on peanuts.
They too maintain reasonably high duties,” Dhar said. Sharing similar views, Professor at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) Rakesh Mohan Joshi said that the US allegations are not correct and in fact, they should rationalise their duty structure being a developed nation. Trade Promotion Council of India Chairman Mohit Singla said that the assertion of the US is not factually correct.
