New Delhi - The government has decided to bide time and take a reactive – rather than pre-emptive – approach to the impending tariff threat from the incoming Donald Trump administration in the US, according to official sources. It is unlikely that the FY26 Budget, to be presented in Parliament on February 1, would undertake any anticipatory customs duty restructuring to bring down the tariff levels in response to Trump’s charges of India being a “high tariff” nation, these sources said.

At best, routine duty adjustments, including those aimed at further correction of the “inverted duty . . .