From the Rose Garden to the courtroom: The first-year audit of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs

On April 2, 2025, US President Donald Trump walked into the Rose Garden and called it ‘Liberation Day.’ The promise was simple, make America rich again by taxing the world. The mechanics were anything but. A 10 percent blanket duty hit almost everything; dozens of countries, India included, were handed higher ‘reciprocal’ rates, calculated in ways economists struggled to defend. Within days, cargo was re-timed, orders rewritten, and boardrooms forced to price an invisible variable: the President’s next post. India’s exporters saw both opportunity and danger, pharmaceuticals were spared early, but labour-heavy sectors like textiles and gems sat squarely in…