White House Names India Top China Tariff Enabler
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- White House report 'The Great Transhipment Scam' identifies India among the top 'enablers' of China's tariff evasion, singling out the Pune-Gujarat-Chennai production belt for absorbing pumps and compressors and affecting supply chains in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus.
- India is placed in Tier 1 of a three-tier classification of 40+ countries flagged for transshipment risk, alongside Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan.
- U.S. tariffs on India are already stacking: a 10% tariff for insufficient action on forced-labor goods, with legislation pending for up to 100% tariffs over Indian imports of Russian oil.
- USTR has an ongoing investigation into excess capacity that could result in further tariffs on top of existing measures.
- OTEA estimates roughly $67 billion in U.S.-bound goods were transshipped from China through the top hubs — Mexico, India, and Vietnam — in 2025, generating an estimated $28 billion in lost tariff revenue.
- Chinese exporters route goods through third countries where limited assembly, finishing, repackaging, relabeling, or documentation changes create the appearance of a different national origin.
Why it matters: India now sits in the most-punished tier of a US tariff-evasion blacklist alongside allies like Japan, South Korea, and Israel — meaning this is a systemic supply-chain accusation, not a country-specific one. Combined with the existing 10% forced-labor tariff and pending 100% Russian-oil tariff, plus an open USTR excess-capacity probe, India faces at least three parallel trade enforcement tracks simultaneously, with $28 billion in estimated lost US revenue cited as the justification.
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