Explore Business Standard
Donald Trump Tariff Hike
The impact of a potential trade war with the United States and massive increases in European defence spending and government borrowing loom over a policy meeting Thursday at the European Central Bank, which is expected to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point. Analysts are widely expecting a cut in the European Central Bank's (ECB) benchmark deposit rate to 2.50 per cent, a step to lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses in an economy that's struggling to get out of first gear. The bank's monetary policy statement and post-meeting news conference by President Christine Lagarde will be scrutinised for hints about how far the bank will cut rates amid concerns about weak growth. The bank has already reduced the benchmark rate by 1.25 percentage points since June. Meanwhile new concerns that would massively reshuffle the economic picture are likely to intrude: the potential impact of new tariffs on European imports from US President Trump, which could slow growth,
South Korean officials have asked the Trump administration to exclude their country from US plans to impose aggressive tariffs on trade partners, emphasizing that Seoul is already applying low duties on American products under the free trade agreement between the two nations. South Korea's government on Friday said Deputy Trade Minister Park Jong-won made the request while travelling to Washington this week for meetings with unspecified officials from the White House, the Department of Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative. The South Korean Trade Ministry didn't say what Park heard from the Americans. Park cited how South Korean companies were contributing to the US economy through large-scale business investments and noted that the country was already imposing low duties on free trade partners such as the United States. He called for South Korea to be excluded from US plans to establish reciprocal tariffs with trade partners and raise duties for imported steel and .
The Congress on Wednesday claimed that the talk of reciprocal tariffs by US President Donald Trump is calling into question a consumption tax like GST, and wondered whether his "good friend in New Delhi" would stand up to it when national sovereignty is at stake. Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said his party has long been calling for a GST 2.0 that will make GST a truly Good and Simple Tax, as it was intended to be. It has called for the barest minimum of rates and vastly reformed compliance rules, he said in a post on X. "Now President Trump is threatening the very existence of GST. By its very structure, GST is applicable to imports but not on exports. This has never been disputed," he said. Now all this talk of reciprocal tariffs by the US President is calling into question a consumption tax like GST, Ramesh claimed. "WTO apart, national sovereignty is at stake here. Will President Trump's good friend in New Delhi, who keeps trumpeting that he