ECONOMY
US slaps 25% additional tariff on Indian imports, taking total the tax rate to 50%
- IBJ Bureau
- Aug 07, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order, imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on India over its purchases of Russian oil. The new tariff, which will come into effect in 21 days, is set to “stack” on top of an existing country-specific tariff of 25 per cent.
In doing so, Mr Trump is set to make good on a threat for higher tariffs on India, as he has accused the country of effectively financing the Russian war in Ukraine. “They are fuelling the war machine,” he had said a day earlier.
India’s first 25 per cent levy takes effect on Thursday, a part of the scores of new duties that will see importers paying between 10 and 50 per cent, as they bring in goods from nearly 200 countries around the globe. Outside of India, Switzerland is the developed nation whose goods face a whopping increase of up to 39 per cent.
Mr Trump also said that he would soon announce tariffs on semiconductor and pharmaceutical imports, as he prepares to add more sectoral duties to his mix of tariffs. He said duties on pharmaceuticals could eventually balloon as high as 250 per cent. On Wednesday, during a White House event with Apple CEO Tim Cook, he suggested that he would impose a tariff of 100 per cent on “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States”.
In the past several days, Mr Trump has unleashed a flurry of deals and trade moves, leading up to his self-imposed deadline.
India on Wednesday hit back at the US for doubling the tariff to 50 per cent, reiterating that the action was “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”. The government said it would take “all actions necessary protect its national interests”.
“The United States has in recent days targeted India’s oil imports from Russia. We have already made clear our position on these issues, including the fact that our imports are based on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4 billion people of India,” a Ministry of External Affairs official spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
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