Imagine a mega hurricane is raging through a town. As it marauds down its unpredictable path, it randomly sweeps away entire buildings; some have their roofs blown off. When the devastation ends and things have to be rebuilt from scratch, those with the least damage end up as winners.
India seems to be in a similar position in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff typhoon. Our roof has been blown off, but we are still standing, while others have been razed to the ground.
For starters, medicines, our most important exports to the United States, have been kept out of the new tariff regime. This is why pharma stocks rallied a day after the tariff announcements. Most analysts were expecting the US to impose a 7-9 percent import duty on drugs made by Indian companies, and investors had priced that in.
There’s no new bad news for makers of auto parts and aluminium—two of our other big exports to the US. The Trump administration had already levied a 25 percent tariff on them, and that hasn’t changed. In fact, if anything, it is lower than the 27 percent overall reciprocal tariff that the US has announced on Indian goods.
(The author was Senior Managing Editor, NDTV India & NDTV Profit. He tweets @Aunindyo2023. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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