Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to India, the US administration on Saturday talked tough on trade and economy, stating that the Make in India programme has made the protectionism concerns in India ‘even greater’.

US officials said they saw an increase in trade barriers, and it will ‘certainly come up’ among the leaders. Washington also called it a ‘failure of the Indian government’ to provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets in numerous sectors.

The Indo-US trade partnership increased by 10 per cent last year, but lack of a predictable and stable tariff regime has frustrated many US businesses.

As Trump heads to India, the administration has flagged these concerns publicly and expects the Indian side to address them. Much depends on New Delhi’s approach on how it will be able to resolve these issues, keeping in view the interests of India’s economy and the Indian consumer.

These comments are in line with Trump’s comments earlier this week that India has not treated the United States ‘very well’ on the trade front.

New Delhi, however, maintains that the criticism about tariffs is ‘unfair’ since tariffs are at par with other developing countries, and should not be compared to Germany or Canada. Officials also said the US’s close trading partners such as South Korea and Japan have higher tariff barriers.

In a briefing to preview Trump’s February 24-25 visit, a senior US administration official in Washington said on Saturday, ‘The concerns that led to the revocation, suspension of India’s GSP access remains a concern for us. And…it was really the failure of the Indian government to provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets in numerous sectors.’

Generalised System of Preference, or GSP, is the US’s trade preference programme to promote economic development.

The official said, ‘We continue to talk to our Indian colleagues about addressing these market access barriers. Our trade teams led by USTR have been in touch with their counterparts over the past several weeks. That engagement will continue.’

US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer will not be part of the US delegation.

‘Trade and economic relationship with India is critically important to the United States, and I think also access to the United States market is critical to the Indian government. We do want to make sure that we get this balance right. We want to address a bunch — a lot of concerns, and we are not quite there yet,’ the official said. ‘We will likely have discussion with the Prime Minister about these concerns and continue the discussion beyond this visit.’

One US administration official said, ‘We have had a number of announcements coming from India in the past several weeks, which are making the discussions a bit more difficult perhaps. Recent announcements on Make in India have made the protectionism concerns in India even greater. So we will be discussing those concerns. And what we see as an increase in barriers, not a decrease, this will certainly come up among the leaders.’

The official said: ‘Whether or not there will be announcement on a trade package is wholly dependent upon what the Indians are prepared to do. That said, we have a number of significant commercial deals, which are of great significance that we are very pleased to announce in a number of key sectors.’

On the concerns, the official said, ‘I think many concerns about private sector are well documented. Certainly throughout the GSP process, you had a number of key market access issues raised by stakeholder communities in the United States. But the Make in India push of the Indian government, as I noted, has made the protectionism concerns even more of a concern to us. We have seen India’s Budget process recently used to raise tariffs on products of interest in the United States. We continue to see important divergences on e-commerce and digital trade. So it’s a pretty wide scope, frankly, of important service and goods access barriers that we need to address.’

stay connected with us! For more updates

LIKE SHARE and SUBSCRIBE

if you like the article information then press the like button, Comments you’re opinions about this article and share it with family and friends on social media platforms

SUSCRIBE Quickclarity news to get latest news update

Thank you for reading.