United States President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to impose taxes on India, China and Brazil, stating that the countries impose high tariffs and “harm” Washington’s interests, PTI reported.

“We are going to put tariffs on outside countries and outside people that really mean harm to us,” Trump told House Republicans in Florida. “Well, they mean us harm, but they basically want to make their country good.”

This is the first such meeting Trump has held with his party members since he was sworn in as president for a second term earlier this month, PTI reported.

The Republican leader has repeatedly iterated his intention to impose a reciprocal tax on India, citing the high tariffs by New Delhi on foreign goods.

“Look at what others do,” PTI quoted him as saying on Monday. “China is a tremendous tariff maker, and India and Brazil and so many other countries. So we are not going to let that happen any longer because we are going to put America first.”

The US will also establish a “very fair system where money is going to come into our coffers and America is going to be very rich again”, the president said, adding that this will happen very quickly.

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens,” Trump said. “Under the American first economic model, as tariffs on other countries go up, taxes on American workers and businesses will come down and massive numbers of jobs and factories will come home.”

Trump also urged companies to set up manufacturing units in the US if they wanted to avoid tariffs. “We are going to have more plants built in the next short period of time than anybody ever envisioned before because the incentive is going to be there because they have no tariff whatsoever,” he said.

Trump has voiced concerns about India’s trade ties with the US on several occasions.

In December, Trump said that India and Brazil were among the countries that charged high tariffs on US products.

“The word reciprocal is important because if somebody charges us – India, we do not have to talk about our own – if India charges us 100%, do we charge them nothing for the same?” Trump had said.

In the run-up to the US presidential elections, Trump, who was also president of the country between 2017 and 2021, vowed to introduce a reciprocal tax if he was re-elected.

He said in October that “reciprocity” would be an important element of his economic plan to “make America extraordinarily wealthy again”.

“It’s a word that’s very important in my plan because we generally don’t charge tariffs,” Trump had said. “I started that process, it was so great, with the vans and the small trucks, etc. We really don’t charge. China will charge us a 200% tariff. Brazil is a big charger. The biggest charger of all is India.”

On September 17, Trump called India a “very big abuser” of the trade relationship with his country.

In August 2023, he claimed that India imposes excessively high tax rates on American products, and said that he would introduce reciprocal taxes if he were to come to power in 2024.

In February 2019, India slashed the customs duty on imported motorcycles such as Harley-Davidson to 50% after Trump called it “unfair” and threatened to increase the tariff on the import of Indian bikes to the United States. Trump had responded at the time saying that the rate was still “unacceptable”.

Three months later, Washington had terminated the designation of India as a beneficiary developing country under the Generalized System of Preferences Programme, claiming that India had not assured the US that it would “provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets”. Trump was the president of the United States at the time.

Under the programme, certain products can enter the United States duty-free if beneficiary developing countries meet the eligibility criteria established by its Congress.

‘New Delhi will do what is right’

On Monday, Trump also told reporters that India “will do what’s right” with regard to deporting undocumented Indian migrants in the US, Reuters reported. This came after his phone call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, their first conversation since Trump’s inauguration.

The statement comes amid reports of India working with the Trump administration to deport approximately 18,000 undocumented or visa-overstaying Indian nationals in the US.

On January 24, India’s Ministry of External Affairs reiterated New Delhi’s opposition to illegal immigration and affirmed its commitment to repatriating Indian nationals residing abroad without proper documentation.

In a statement about the phone call on Monday, the External Affairs Ministry said that Modi and Trump discussed the bilateral relationship and measures to advance it, including in the areas of technology, trade, investment, energy and defence.

“The two leaders exchanged views on global issues, including the situation in West Asia and Ukraine, and reiterated their commitment to work together for promoting global peace, prosperity and security,” said the ministry.