India says trade negotiations with US are still going on
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India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said trade negotiations with the US are still going on.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MUMBAI – India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Aug 23 that trade negotiations with the United States are still going on but there are lines that New Delhi needs to defend.
Indian goods face additional US tariffs of up to 50 per cent, among the highest imposed by Washington, due to its increased purchases of Russian oil. A 25 per cent tariff has already come into effect, while the remaining 25 per cent is set to be enforced from Aug 27.
A planned visit by US trade negotiators to New Delhi from Aug 25 to 29 has been called off
“We have some redlines in the negotiations, to be maintained and defended,” Mr Subrahmanyam said at an event in New Delhi, singling out the interests of the country’s farmers and small producers.
India-US trade talks collapsed earlier this year due to India not agreeing to open its vast agricultural and dairy sectors. Bilateral trade between the world’s largest and fifth largest economy is worth over US$190 billion (S$243 billion).
“It is our right to make decisions in our ‘national interest’,” Mr Jaishankar said.
Analysts at Capital Economics said on Aug 22 that if the full US tariffs come into force and stick, the hit to India’s economic growth would be 0.8 percentage points both this year and next.
“The longer-term harm could be even greater as a high tariff could puncture India’s appeal as a global manufacturing hub,” said the Indian minister, who described US President Donald Trump’s policy announcements as “unusual”.
“We have not had a US president who conducts his foreign policy so publicly as the current one and it is a departure from the traditional way of conducting business with the world,” Mr Jaishankar said.
He also said Washington’s concern over India’s Russian oil purchases was not being applied to other major buyers such as China and the European Union.
“If the argument is oil, then there are other big buyers. If the argument is who is trading more, than there are bigger traders,” he said.
Russia-European trade is bigger than India-Russia trade, he added.
The minister also said India’s purchases of Russian oil had not been raised in earlier trade talks with the US before the public announcement of tariffs. REUTERS
