Donald Trump keeps reciprocal tariff threat alive: 'We have been very nice for a long time but…'

US President Donald Trump

With a week left for the reciprocal tariffs to kick in, US President Donald Trump has once again said that there will be no exception in the levy plan. When asked if these tariffs will be truly ‘reciprocal’, US President said, “well, I may give a lot of countries breaks, but its reciprocal.” He went on to say that the US has been ‘very nice for a very long time’ but that is about to change next month.

“We have been very nice to a lot of countries for a long time, but April 2nd is Liberation Day, I call it Liberation Day.” He also spoke about what his administration has done with Venezuela. “But today, we did something with respect to Venezuela. We'll be announcing some additional tariffs over next few days having to do with automobiles, cars, lumber...”

The US president has been saying that the reciprocal tariffs are the key tool to pivot the economy, which is increasingly staring at recession. “April 2nd will be the reciprocal day, and we will be bringing back some money that has been taken from us.”

The statement comes on a day when the US officials are visiting India for key trade talks. India will be among the nations that will also see impact of reciprocal tariffs. Major rating agencies and experts have said that India may not see high impact of tariffs that much due to low exposure.

Moneycontrol had reported yesterday that the Finance Bill 2025-26 plans to scrap what’s popularly known as ‘Google tax.’ This plan to do away with equalisation duty on online advertising from April 2025 will be beneficial to tech giants such as Meta, Google among others.