In a Tit-for-Tat move to heavy hike in steel tariffs by US, India increases import duty on 29 items; revised rates to come in force soon

New Delhi, September 19: Taking a Tit-for-Tat action against Washington’s tariffs increase on steel and aluminium items, India in the month of June this year introduced a comprehensive hike in customs duty on a total of 29 products including Bengal gram, lentils, artemia etc imported from the US. Notably, the hike in the import duty will come into force from November 3 onwards.

Though the increase in tariff rates was introduced by New Delhi in the month of June the government postponed the retaliatory hikes until 3 November since the two countries were attempting to find a solution.

Earlier, the Trump administration imposed 25 percent duty on certain steel products and 10 percent on aluminium products, which would help the US government collect 241 million dollars in import duty. In retaliation to this, New Delhi announced higher tariff on 29 US products, including almonds, apples and phosphoric acid worth $10.6 billion imports in retaliation to the steel and aluminium tariff hikes by the US.

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.

India has also dragged the US to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism over the imposition of import duties on steel and aluminium.