New Delhi:
The impact of US President Donald Trump’s mutual tariff is not yet known and New Delhi’s strategy to deal with the situation is to make a bilateral trade agreement with Washington with this year’s collapse, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said on Wednesday.
In the first detailed response to the US policy on Tariff, S Jaishankar said that Trump is probably the only country to reach an understanding with Washington to seal the trade deal after the presidential post for the second time.
Foreign Minister’s comments came after Trump’s widespread tariffs against nearly five countries, which triggered massive trade disruption and apprehensions of global economic recession.
India is one of the countries that have adopted a cautious approach to potentially react to seismic action, stating that it is associated with the Trump administration on the bilateral trade agreement (BTA).
“I don’t think it is possible to speak about what the effect will be, because we do not know. What is our strategy? I think it is very clear,” S Jaishankar said at the News 18 Rising Bharat Summit.
He said, “We decided that we would attach the Trump administration to the set of issues quickly and we were very open with them, very creative with them because they were with us, and what we agreed to do was trying to interact on bilateral trade agreement with this year’s fall,” he said.
After a conversation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump at Washington DC in February, the two sides announced to negotiate the first installment of BTA until the fall of 2025.
“I think President Trump is the only country after assuming the President for the second time, which has actually reached such an understanding in principle,” said S. Jaishankar.
He said that every country in the world is making its strategy to deal with the United States today and India aims to attack a trade treaty with the Trump administration.
“In our case, our strategy has a goal. And the goal is to see if it is really possible to deal with this situation by ending a bilateral trade agreement. And I should add that it is an interesting way, this is our aim for a long time,” he said.
S Jaishankar said that the “current situation” may have created circumstances for such serious conversations on the business deal.
“But if you look at President Trump’s first term, we were actually interacting on a business deal that could not Fruct, and even if someone sees the biden’s administration, we discussed business prospects and we ended with IPEF initiatives,” he said.
According to Washington’s long-term vision for Indo-Pacific, then the US President Joe Biden launched the ambitious Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in May 2022.
This was an initiative aimed at intensive cooperation among similar-ideology countries in areas such as clean energy, supply-chain flexibility and digital trade.
“They (Biden Administration) were too much to make a bilateral agreement. From the Indian point of view, doing some work bilaterally with the United States is not like a negative or an unwanted position,” Sayashankar said.
“On the contrary, this is something that has been our aim for a long time,” he said.
Talking about India’s engagement with European countries between Russia-Ukraine War and American tariffs, S. Jaishankar said, “It has been an attempt to interact with Europe on a free trade deal.”
He said, “I am confident that we are looking at a very intensive association with America, and by the way, with the UK, I hope I hope to hop up with Europe,” he said.
“We have an aspiring goal. We want to shut down the FTA this year,” he said.
India is also interacting with a trade agreement with the UK.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is published by a syndicated feed.)
