March 5, 2025 – In an address to the joint session of the Congress early this morning, for the first time since he came to power in January this year, US President Donald Trump called out India, as well as the EU, Brazil and Mexico, for unfair trade policies towards the US. He announced that the US will impose reciprocal tariffs on several nations, starting April 2.

"I wanted to make it April 1st but didn't want it to be accused of April Fool’s Day... it's a lot of money," Trump said.

In a speech that was the longest Presidential to lawmakers on record, lasting more than one hour and 40 minutes, Trump declared "The American Dream is unstoppable” and kept bringing up the name of his advisor and friend Elon Musk repeatedly to cheers from the Republicans present.

The US President, in his second coming, proclaimed that he would save the country from an “economic catastrophe” and announced that “our country will be woke no longer”. He hailed Musk’s controversial assault on the federal bureaucracy and defended his tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico.

“We have been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth,” he claimed.

India was on his radar, too, as Trump dashed the country’s hopes for concessions when he targeted India for its high tariffs particularly the auto sector.

Coming down hard on India, Trump said, “India charges us 100 per cent tariffs; the system is not fair to the US, it never was. On April 2, reciprocal tariffs kick in. Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they use non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we will use non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market.”

“If you don’t make your product in America under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff, and in some cases, a rather large one. Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades and now it's our turn to start using them against those other countries,” the US President said to loud cheers from his partymen. 

With Media Inputs