WASHINGTON– Former Indian Ambassador to France Mohan Kumar has pushed back against the Trump administration’s repeated claim that India is the “Maharaja of tariffs,” calling the label misleading and inaccurate.
Writing in Newsweek under the headline “Is India a ‘Tariff King’? Not Really,” Kumar, who now heads the Jadeja Motwani Institute for American Studies at OP Jindal Global University, argued that the perception of India’s tariff regime as excessively high is “widespread but fallacious.”
He said the U.S.-driven tariff war itself violates Washington’s commitments under World Trade Organization rules, even though the WTO has been “moribund for a while.”
The comments came as President Donald Trump again criticized India’s tariffs on U.S. exports, insisting they are “about the highest in the world” and unfairly limit American access to Indian markets.
Kumar countered by stressing that the trade-weighted tariff — which better reflects real market access than the simple average — is just 4.6 percent for India, far below the often-cited 16 percent figure. He acknowledged India’s higher tariffs in agriculture, but said they serve to protect farmers, warning that U.S. demands to open the sector would amount to “asking [India] to commit suicide.”
He further argued that such demands are “egregious” given that Western farmers themselves benefit from heavy subsidies.
Kumar also highlighted that in key sectors like electronics and technology, most Indian imports carry zero tariffs, making U.S. exporters’ access equal to or better than in other Asian markets. By comparison, Vietnam imposes 8.5 percent and China charges between 5.4 and 20 percent. (Source: IANS)
