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Donald Trump on Indian Rice: US President Donald Trump threatened India and said that ‘India should not dump rice in America. We will solve this with tariffs.
9 December, 2025
Donald Trump on Indian Rice: US President Donald Trump has again threatened to impose tariffs on India. This time they have planned to impose tariff on Indian rice as an excuse. On Monday, Trump held a roundtable meeting at the White House with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in which he said that India should not dump rice in the United States market and he would take care of it, and he also stressed that this problem would be easily solved by tariffs.
‘India should not dump rice’
Merrill Kennedy, who runs a rice mill, told Trump that rice producers in the southern part of the country are really struggling and other countries are dumping rice into the US. When Trump asked which countries were dumping rice into the US, Kennedy replied, “India, and Thailand, even China in Puerto Rico.” Trump turned to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and said, “India, tell me about India. Why is India allowed to do this? They have to pay tariffs. Do they have any exemptions on rice?” Besant replied, “No sir, we are still working on their trade deal.” Trump said, “But they shouldn’t be dumping. I’ve heard this from others. They can’t do that.” Then Kennedy told Trump that there was a case against India in the World Trade Organization.
VIDEO | Washington: US President Donald Trump (@POTUS) says, “India subsidising rice; they shouldn’t be dumping rice in US.”
(Source: Third Party)
(Full video available on PTI Videos – https://t.co/n147TvrpG7) pic.twitter.com/aDsJExXxnb
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) December 9, 2025
Trump will solve the trend with tariffs
Trump asked Kennedy to name the countries that were dumping rice in the US and asked Besant to note down the names. Kennedy said, India, Thailand, China in Puerto Rico, not in the continental US, but in Puerto Rico. These are key and American farmers can feed the US as well as countries around the world, but we want fair trade, not free trade. Trump said that it would be very easy to solve it. This would be solved very quickly by imposing tariffs on countries that are shipping illegally. He said, “Therefore we have to win the case in the Supreme Court and said that this problem will be solved in a day.
50 percent tariff has been imposed on India
Let us tell you that Trump has imposed 25 percent tariff and 25 percent penalty on everything including rice from India. In this way America has imposed 50 percent tariff on India. Due to tariff, there has been a 50 percent reduction in rice exported from India to America from September 2025. Let us tell you, India is the world’s largest producer of rice with 150 million tonnes and it has 28 percent share in the global market. Data from the Indian Rice Exporters Federation (IREF) shows that it is also a top exporter, with a 30.3 percent share in global exports in 2024–2025. In such a situation, if Trump imposes more tariff on rice, it will create great difficulty for India.
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