Indira Rajaraman: US Liberation Day tariffs target the WTO’s playing field

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) is a cabinet-rank official whose office is embedded in the Executive Office of the President of the US. The USTR on its website is described as “the president’s principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues." Created by a legislative act in 1962, the USTR has historically proclaimed its alignment with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a leveller of the global trade playing field.

In the years before and after the Indian reforms of 1991, the then USTR Carla Hills was a frequent visitor to the ministry of commerce in Udyog Bhavan, with a sheaf of documented Indian violations of WTO rules. The mosquitoes in Udyog Bhavan must not have improved her mood. India was consistently on the USTR watch list.

In the most recent 2025 USTR report released on 31 March, India is criticized for tariff and non-tariff impediments to US exports (not updated to tariffs negotiated with a USTR delegation in March 2025). Against that backdrop, let us look at the 2025 tariff initiatives by the US, before and after its big bang on 2 April. They fall into five categories in terms of disruption of the pre-existing WTO playing field.

The first category was of country-targeted tariffs at 25% on (most) imports from two countries—Mexico and Canada—bound to the US by a free trade regional treaty of the kind permitted as a carve-out by the WTO. These tariffs do violate the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) of the first Donald Trump administration. But the USMCA falls outside the purview of the WTO.