Trump Declares Trade War On India, Imposes New Tariffs

President Trump has a victory present for newly re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi - and it's the economic equivalent of a flaming bag of feces left on India's doorstep.

In his latest act of protectionist aggression in what has already been an action-packed week, Trump late Friday announced that his administration was terminating India's designation as a developing nation under a trade program that allowed Indian exporters to ship 2,000 products into the US duty free. The decision to revoke India's preferential trade status, which mirrors Trump's decision to revoke Turkey's status under the program a few weeks back, comes one day after Modi was sworn in for a second term.

Under the decades-old program - known as the Generalized System of Preferences - Indian companies were able to avoid some $5.7 billion in duties back in 2017.

The new standards will take effect June 5.

"I have determined that India has not assured the United States that India will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets," Trump said in a proclamation on Friday evening. "Accordingly, it is appropriate to terminate India’s designation as a beneficiary developing country effective June 5, 2019."

The decision isn't unexpected: The White House warned back in March that it could end India's preferential treatment if India didn't agree to certain reforms, but it decided to hold off so as to not hurt Modi politically during the run up to the election. According to Bloomberg, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has become increasingly frustrated with India’s trade barriers and practices. The trade rep has taken issue with the country’s self-designation as a developing nation at the World Trade Organization.

The White House's Friday proclamation also imposes tariffs on solar cells and washing machines from India and Turkey. Those tariffs had been imposed by Trump in 2018, but India and Turkey had been exempt because of their status as developing nations under the GSP.

One critic of Trump's decision warned that ending the designation for India would cost American businesses hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Dan Anthony, executive director of the Coalition for GSP, a trade group, said that the decision "will cost American businesses over $300 million in additional tariffs every year."

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He needs to punish american companies who outsource their labor to indian and chinese companies, including those staffing agencies who maintain a fake American presence but are really just fronts for cheap overseas bodyshops.

I agree, however this needed to be done as early as the mid 80s when the outsourcing began in the first place. Today, decades later, most of our productive industry has already been outsourced. You are talking about TENS OF THOUSANDS of corporations that have sold out to other nations to increase net profits. Its hard to target each one individually anymore, without some across-the-board tariff.

However, it gets complex. Because in order to get productive jobs back over here we need to incentivize them to come back. This is also becoming extremely difficult, for example, when Trump passed the tax cuts, China followed up by lowering corporate taxes to 0% as long as they sign contract to remain in China! That is extremely difficult for the US being put in such position. I truly think the death knell of the US petrodollar reserve currency status was the fact our government allowed all this outsourcing to begin with 40+ years ago, and with NAFTA and the WTO, they even exacerbated the problem further.

First outsourcing was for manufacturing. Then cheap jobs like call centers. Now it's software engineering. It's all MBA garbage thinking on how to maximize short term profits. We dont necessarily need to bring back widget production, but we need to have a plan for keeping Americans employed across the blue collar/white collar divide. We can't have a society that talks about how great STEM careers are, then outsources every fuckin job to 3rd worlders because the cost is less. /rant

The second wave of outsourcing was manufacturing jobs. The first wave was silicon computer chips / semiconductors. So-called "Silicon Valley" is nothing more than a fraud because they rely heavily on circuitry made offshore. Silicon Valley is just a bunch of corporations in bed with government creating surveillance tools and weaponizing social media to cull and control the masses, not much productive industry at all, mostly programming and covert spook jobs.

That IS manufacturing. And it originally went to Japan.

OK, I stand corrected. However, that was phase ONE of outsourced manufacturing… phase two was the manufacturing of cars and utilities being outsourced… then came the third wave of outsourcing which had more to with mining and refinery of metals/commodities/resources.

Im ok with outsourcing of mining as it makes the most sense to drink your neighbors milkshake first and then use your own resources as the last resort. It's why tbe US pays farmers to not grow shit; we need the available resources on demand if we go to war or have to close all borders for some reason. America has tons of oil which we choose to minimally exploit for the same reasons.

Well I live in a small town with farmers and ranchers nearby and I can tell you that some companies around the area hire helping hands, paying land owners so they can grow crops and sell off grain/food. They give out royalty to land owners to use of their private land to produce and sell agricultural stock. Not all rural areas work this way, but many do.

If we were to pay farmers not to grow anything that would be suicide on our part, why would we want to rely on other nations for food consumption? That is the #1 way to subjugate and control a nation is to make it reliant on handouts for basic resources like food.

It's the same logic as why we consume other nations geological resources first over our own. It's cheaper. We subsidize farmers to maintain farmland for the reasons I already expressed. If you want to pretend that America's heartland is a bunch of small independent farmers and not giant commercial conglomerates you are already being disingenuous. Real farms are multi thousand acre plots not a hundred here or there.