In retaliation to heavy hike in steel tariffs by US, New Delhi increases import duty on 29 items
New Delhi, June 21: Taking a stern action against Washington’s cruel move of increasing tariffs on steel and aluminium items, India on Thursday introduced a comprehensive hike in customs duty on a total of 29 products including Bengal gram, lentils, artemia etc imported from the US. The hike in the import duty will come into effect from August 4 of this year.
New Delhi has increased import duty on chickpeas and Bengal gram by 60 percent while on lentils the hike is of 30 percent. The duty on boric acid and binders for foundry moulds has been hiked to 7.5 percent, while that on domestic reagents was raised to 10 percent. Duty on artemia, a kind of shrimp, has been hiked to 15 percent.
The other products on which duties have been hiked include certain kind of nuts, iron and steel products, apples, pears, flat-rolled products of stainless steel, other alloy steel, tube and pipe fittings, and screws, bolts and rivets. However, there was no duty hike on motorcycles imported from the US.
The move from New Delhi came in retaliation after the US made a duty hike on certain steel and aluminium products which had tariff implication of USD 241 million on India. Taking a cognizance into this, India submitted a list of 30 items to World Trade Organization (WTO) on which it proposed to raise customs duties by up to 50 percent.
Interestingly, out of proposed 30 items India excluded motorbikes above 800 cc.
BACKGROUND:
In the month of March this year, the Trump administration imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminium items. After this move, the cost of steel went up by USD 198.6 million and aluminium shipments by USD 42.4 million. The move was condemned worldwide and China immediately took retaliatory action and imposed heavy import duty on various products.
Meanwhile, India dragged the US to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism over the imposition of import duties on steel and aluminium.