With less than a week left for his India visit, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, February 18, cast doubts over a possible trade deal with India and said that he is “saving the big deal” with India for later. He added that he “does not know” if it will be done before the presidential election in November.
“We can have a trade deal with India. But I’m really saving the big deal for later,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “We’re doing a very big trade deal with India. We’ll have it. I don’t know if it’ll be done before the election, but we’ll have a very big deal with India,” he added.
Indicating dissatisfaction over US-India trade ties, the US President said that India did not treat them well. “We’re not treated very well by India. I happen to like Prime Minister Modi a lot,”The Indian ExpressTrump as saying.
Meanwhile, according to a report by the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF), the latest quarterly data depict a continuation of overall positive bilateral trade trends. The third-quarter data reflects some downslide in growth rates, which could be due to reasons like “economic slowdown in India, the impact of US-China trade war, GSP withdrawal from the US side and retaliatory tariffs on specific US goods from the Indian side,” the USISPF said.
For the first three quarters of 2019, the cumulative US-India trade in goods and services ($110.9 billion) increased by 4.5 per cent. While US exports grew at four per cent, the import grew at five per cent. While the US exported $45.3 billion worth of goods and services to India, it imported $65.6 billion worth of goods and services from India.
The USISPF has projected the total bilateral trade to touch $238 billion by 2025 if the current 7.5 per cent average annual rate of growth sustains. However, the bilateral trade can reach a range of $283 billion and $327 billion, if there is a higher growth rate.
Earlier on February 10, the United States’ government had removed India from its list of ‘developing countries’ that are exempted from investigations into whether they harm American industry with unfairly subsidised exports.
The Shiv Sena editorial, Saamana, had criticised the United States’ decision to remove India from the list of developing countries.