Expect India-US trade deal in not-too-distant future: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

Noting the high tariffs that India has, Lutnick said that President Donald Trump is willing to call that out straight away

Washington: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has said one should expect a trade deal between India and the US in the “not-too-distant future” as the two countries have found a place that works for them.

“So the idea is when they put the right person and India put the right person on the other side of the table, and we’ve managed, I think, to be in a very, very good place,” Lutnick said in his keynote address at the eighth edition of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) Leadership Summit here Monday.

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“And you should expect a deal between the United States and India in the not-too-distant future because I think we found a place that really works for both countries,” “I would say very optimistic,” Lutnick said about the trade deal between India and the US.

Noting the high tariffs that India has, Lutnick said that President Donald Trump is willing to call that out straight away. “Now the President is willing to call out things straight away, meaning India is very protectionist with tariffs. They have a 100 per cent tariff on this, and a 100% tariff on that. And if you ask them why, the answer is, ‘I don’t know why. It just is’.”

Lutnick said the idea of really looking at those things, thinking about them and bringing them down to a level that is reasonable and appropriate “so we can be great trading partners with each other, I think is absolutely on the table and it’s not stressful” and the sides are now working to “make this a proper trading relationship.”

On the trade deal with India, he further said that “earlier countries get a better deal. That’s the way it is.” He noted that India is trying hard to be one of the earlier countries, “which I appreciate. But these kind of deals used to take two or three years, and we’re trying to get them done in a month, which is, just not the ordinary DNA of trading relationships between countries.

“But what I hope to achieve is we would like market access. We would like our businesses to have reasonable access to the markets of India. Now, it’s not going to be everything, and it’s not going to be everywhere, but we want to have the trade deficit reduced,” he said.

In exchange for that, Lutnick said India is going to want certain key markets, to want to make sure that they have special access to the American marketplace. “And so that’s the trade-off. If I say, ‘Look, I’ll treat you incredibly kindly on the things that are really important to you, and you bring down your tariffs and give us market access and let’s find the proper place in the middle’.”

Underlining the importance of having the right person on the other side for negotiations, Lutnick said that “if they put a normal trade minister, it’s an endless set of talking and no outcome because they’re used to saying, ‘this kind of deal would take three years, we’ll get this done in two years’, and that’s not really fun for me.”

On what he sees as the vision of the India-US relationship, Lutnick said that it is “unusual” that President Donald Trump is the only person in the administration elected by the full United States of America and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is elected by the people in India. “If you think about the world, how many other leaders actually are elected by their country,” he said, adding that it is “very, very rare.