NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said a trade deal with India would soon be sealed under which American firms would get greater access to Indian markets.
According to Trump, the trade pact with India will be on the lines of the US-Indonesia deal announced early in the day.
“They are going to pay 19% and we are going to pay nothing … we will have full access into Indonesia, and we have a couple of those deals that are going to be announced,” Trump said, adding that the deal with India will be on the same line.
India has not formally reacted to Trump’s claims, but officials say that the US president has the habit of making tall claims in public, which are far from reality. They cite the example of the Vietnam deal; Trump had claimed the South East Asian country had agreed to a 20% tariff, but Hanoi rejected the claim.
India has maintained that it will not sign any deal that is against the country’s interest. New Delhi and Washington are in talks to finalise a trade deal before August 1, the new deadline for imposing the reciprocal tariff. The US has announced a 26% tariff on India, but has put on hold the tariff for now. Currently, only a 10% basic tariff is in place.
An Indian team is in the US for carrying out the fifth round of negotiations on the bilateral trade agreement. Chief negotiator and commerce secretary-designate Rajesh Agrawal on Tuesday said that the Indo-US trade deal was progressing as per the terms of reference decided between the two countries agreed in February.
The US has already announced reciprocal tariff between 25-40% against two dozen nations.