US tariffs not aimed at India, Trump wants to...: Tharoor

In an interview with ANI, Tharoor acknowledged the mounting tensions with the US post-tariff imposition, but explained that it had "nothing to do with India" since Trump's focus remains to push for manufacturing in his country, instead of only relying on imports. 

Tharoor asserted that Trump intended to engage with his political base, where American manufacturers employ American workers to accelerate the manufacturing process. 

In other words, he said, the US president intends to make imported items more expensive by levying tariffs to push the American manufacturers to "start doing things in America". 

"We shouldn't assume that something went wrong between us and American, particularly. What went wrong to begin with is that Trump has this idea that tariffs are the magic instruments to solve a number of his problems. He feels that too many things that were manufactured in America are now being imported. 

He wants to make that more expensive so that the American manufacturer will start doing things more in America and employ American workers, who are his base (the MEGA constituency, as it is called)," the Congress MP said. 

Tharoor stated that Trump's idea of collecting tariffs is another means to gain revenue worth billions of dollars to reduce the deficit in his country. Moreover, the Congress MP refuted the labelling of these tariffs as "reciprocal" while stating that blanket 25 per cent tariff imposition was "unfair". 

"Second, he believes that tariffs can be a useful source of revenue in his country since there is a massive deficit in America. He claims that he could bring down the deficit by collecting billions of dollars in tariffs as revenue. Thirdly, there is also the feeling that some countries have been getting a free ride at the expense of the American consumer. Thus, he calls it reciprocal tariffs even though many of them are not reciprocal because the tariffs imposed by him are higher than, let us say, what we were imposing. Our average tariff on the US was 17 per cent, while theirs is a blanket 25 per cent, which is not fair," Tharoor said.

"This suggests that his logic has nothing to do with India, particularly. However, with his domestic political constituency," the Congress leader said. -- ANI