GDP data to be released today
At 4 p.m. on Friday, August 29, 2025, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI)’s National Statistics Office (NSO) is anticipated to announce India’s GDP figures for the first quarter (Q1) of the fiscal year 2025–2026 (FY26).
India was subject to 25% tariffs starting on August 7. However, starting on August 27, additional punitive 25% tariffs were applied on purchases of Russian oil.
President Donald Trump of the United States first imposed retaliatory tariffs on trading partners that included India on April 2 but halted them until August 6 (especially for India).
Therefore, just 10% baseline tariffs were applied throughout the current fiscal year’s April–June quarter. This quarter’s exporters frontloaded their goods in order to avoid paying the increased tariffs. For the three months in question, this has actually contributed to the growth of India’s GDP.
“There is a potential that frontloading of exports to avoid Trump tariffs before the August 07 rollout had actually boosted expansion of the country’s GDP but not materially,” stated independent economist Karan Mehrishi, author of “The India Collective: What India is all about.”
The 25 percent tariff was put on hold between April and August and was only at 10 percent, according to Nirupama Soundararajan, co-founder and CEO of the Policy Consensus Center.
Mehrishi added that in order to avoid paying the extra duties, the US tech behemoth Apple frontloaded iPhone shipments from India.
Mehrishi continued, “There have been cases where importers did allow front loading to avoid the tariff implementation, but we will know this once the data is released (based on trend expectations).” One example is Apple’s April airlift of more than $2 billion worth of iPhones. However, this is a one-time occurrence and will only contribute a specific percentage point to the overall growth in exports.
GDP impact of tariffs:
“The tax has a negative impact on certain industries, therefore if they experience a slowdown, the GDP may also see a slowdown,” Mukherjee continued. Some orders are being canceled as a result of the tariffs.
Tariffs’ effects on Indian exports
Other experts, however, believe that Trump’s tariffs would have a detrimental effect on India’s exports. “Our major export market, the USA, has imposed uncompetitively high tariffs during India’s primary festive export time,” stated Arpita Mukherjee, Professor at ICRIER. Thus, exports are negatively affected.
