India Holds Firm In US Trade Talks, Prioritises National Interest Over Deadline Pressure
"An FTA is only possible when it's a win-win. National interests will always be supreme," Piyush Goyal said.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday firmly stated that India will only enter into a trade agreement with the United States if it ensures a balanced, win-win outcome for both sides.
Dismissing US President Donald Trump’s July 9 deadline, Goyal made it clear that India does not negotiate under pressure or against arbitrary timelines. His remarks come at a critical point, as both countries attempt to finalise an interim deal but India is signaling it won’t compromise core interests for meeting deadline.
India’s chief negotiator Rajesh Agrawal and his team have returned from Washington after wrapping up a fresh round of talks on the proposed interim trade deal with the US. However, the negotiations remain incomplete, with key sticking points, particularly in the agriculture and automobile sectors, still unresolved, a senior official confirmed.
"An FTA is only possible when it's a win-win. National interests will always be supreme. If that is kept in mind, India is ready to do deals with developed economies," he said, while speaking to reporters at the sidelines of a toy manufacturers exhibition.
"India doesn't do trade deals based on deadlines. Only when a deal is fully ready and aligning with national interest, it's possible," he said.
Goyal's comments point to a scenario where a deal might not be reached before the July 9 deadline, indicating that national interests matter over temporary tariffs.
They also mark an increasingly hardening stance that India has adopted with respect to negotiations. Sources tell NDTV Profit that though the interim trade deal's scope might be limited to goods, India's focus will remain to bat for 'sustained preference' in key labour-intensive sectors such as leather, textiles and footwear.
This also means that India is wary of maintaining relative competitiveness vis-a-vis regional and rival manufacturing economies such as Vietnam, Thailand and Bangladesh.
Therefore, instead of what is prima facie, a lopsided deal between Vietnam and the US, India might just choose to see other deals, since it would mean Trump's tariff balloon deflating.
Even in that scenario, where India's tariffs go up to 26%, it retains a relative advantage versus other manufacturing economies in South Asia and can choose to negotiate a better deal on its own terms, rather than the US.
India has also continued to signal its readiness to retaliate against the US safeguard duties on automobiles parts, steel and aluminium at the World Trade Organisation, making use of a multilateral platform, alongside negotiating bilaterally. It has sent two notices stating that India reserves the right to retaliate, however no concrete action has been taken yet.
