‘India can’t dump rice in US’: Trump signals fresh tariffs as American farmers denounce cheap imports

According to farmers, cheaper imports are making it tough for their products to compete in the marketplace. Some farmers accused imports for falling prices and blamed countries like India, Thailand for undercutting their crops. President Trump said he would “take care” of the alleged dumping of Indian rice into US markets.

“They shouldn’t be dumping. I mean, I heard that, I heard that from others. You can’t do that,” Trump said before turning to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and asking, “Why is India allowed to do that (“dumping rice into the US”)? They have to pay tariffs. Do they have an exemption on rice?”

Bessent told the US president, “No, sir. We’re still working on their trade deal.” Trump responded saying, “They should not be dumping (rice)…They cannot do that.”

The Republican president similarly suggested that he could target fertiliser imported from Canada in order to escalate domestic production of fertilisers.

“A lot of it does come in from Canada, and so we’ll end up putting very severe tariffs on that, if we have to, because that’s the way you want to bolster here. And we can do it here. We can all do that here,” Trump said.

Trump, earlier this year, imposed a 50% tariff on Indian goods which includes a 25% tariff as a penalty for purchasing Russian oil.