Both officials, however, sought to look at the positives, insisting that India could get a competitive edge over key competitors in the United States, including China, Bangladesh and Vietnam on labour intensive sectors. Still, top commerce ministry officials and experts are currently at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) assessing the impact ahead of an official statement they added.

“With 27% effective reciprocal tariff imposed on India, practically, India has over 54-79% advantage China. Similarly, we have significant advantage over Vietnam and Bangladesh for textiles exports. These are some extremely positive factors of the Trump’s tariff move,” one of them said. While the US announcement lists 26% as the tariff levied on India, other documents, including those received by the ministry show that the rate is actually 27%.