Budget 2025: India to slash duties on few US imports after Trump's 'tariff abuser' comment, says report

Indian government may cut custom duties levied on some high-end goods like special kind of steel, expensive motorcycles and electronic items which are imported from the United States, NDTV Profit reported citing people familiar with the matter. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will reportedly make the announcement when she presents the Budget on February 1.

Moneycontrol couldn't verify the report independently.

US President Donald Trump during his presidential campaign had called India a "very, very big abuser" of import tariffs. Recently, he called the BRICS members, which includes India, "tremendous tariff makers".

"We're going to put tariffs on outside countries and people that really mean harm to us. China is a tremendous tariff-maker, and India, Brazil, and so many other countries. (But) we're not going to let that happen any longer... because we're going to put America first," Trump said on January 27. He had earlier threatened "100 percent tariff" on BRICS nations if they planned to replace dollar.

Notably, India imports nearly 20 items from US on which there are duties exceeding 100 percent. A Moneycontrol analysis had recently found that the average tariff gap between India and US is 11.9 percent across over 3,000 products traded between the countries. Tariff gap is the difference between tariffs imposed by India on US imports and those imposed by the United States on Indian exports to the country. Around 10 percent of India's exports to the US attract over 10 percent tariff.

An analysis of World Bank data showed that US' tariff gaps with other nations is much lesser than India’s. In the case of China, the tariff gap is 3.5 percent, while it is 8 percent with Vietnam, 7.2 percent for Indonesia, and 6.8 percent with Mexico.

The upcoming Budget will be closely monitored by market experts. While duties on US imports remain under close watch, salaried taxpayers eagerly await income tax reforms to ease their financial burden.