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Pharma Inc hopes for fair deal as Donald Trump announces 25% tariffs
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Sanket Koul Sohini Das New Delhi/Mumbai
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India's pharmaceuticals and medical devices industries are still hopeful that trade negotiations with the US could cut a fairer deal for both sides, after President Donald Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff rate on India on a social networking platform without divulging the finer details.
Trump on Wednesday called India's tariffs on US exports among the highest in the world, with the most strenuous non-monetary trade barriers of any country, in a post on Truth Social. He also warned of an unspecified penalty on India over the 25 per cent tariff for buying Russian military equipment and energy.
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The Hindu
24 minutes ago
- The Hindu
India will continue to buy Russian oil, government sources tell NYT
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Hindustan Times
24 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Ukraine hits military targets and pipeline in Russia
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NDTV
30 minutes ago
- NDTV
Trump's Tariffs Leave A Lot Of Losers. But Even Winners Will Pay A Price
President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers - from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy US trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes - tariffs - on the products they export to the United States starting Aug 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands - and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run, even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. "In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. 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Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while the Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. "20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate," Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Countries that didn't knuckle under - and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath - got hit harder. Even some of the poor were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600, versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to overturn his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the US has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding US ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax, even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. "The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the US Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wound its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the US Supreme Court. In a hearing on Thursday, the judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded sceptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. "If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are paid by import companies in the US who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits, or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and US businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker have all hiked prices due to US tariffs "This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. "Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles, are going to go up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average US tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. "The US consumer's a big loser, Wolff said.
