Indian team visits US to give fresh push to bilateral trade deal

New Delhi: A delegation of senior Commerce Ministry officials is visiting Washington this week, the second such visit in a fortnight, to iron out differences on key issues in the proposed bilateral trade agreement with the United States, official sources said on Monday.

Some officials have already reached Washington while chief negotiator and special secretary in the Department of Commerce Rajesh Agrawal is expected to join the talk on Wednesday.

This will be the second visit of Agrawal to the US this month. He was in the US early this month when it was widely speculated that the two countries would agree on a “mini trade deal”.

“The final call on the India-US trade deal will be in the coming days, with the mini trade deal likely to be announced by mid-July,” SBI Research said in a note.

As per the latest information, India has already presented a final ‘decent offer’ from its side, which will be reviewed by those calling the shots at the Capitol. Basis indications, India’s proposal covers goods trade worth around $150 billion to $200 billion between the two countries, it said.

The mini trade deal was speculated to be signed before the July 9 deadline of the imposition of the so-called reciprocal tariffs. However, US President Donald Trump's administration has put the implementation of the additional tariffs on hold till the end of this month.

Meanwhile, NITI Aayog in its ‘Trade Watch Quarterly’ report released on Monday said the US tariff structure would provide advantage to India over countries like China, Canada and Mexico.

“In the current US tariff regime, at the HS 2 level, India is expected to gain competitiveness in 22 of the top 30 product categories, covering 61% of its exports to the US and representing 68% of total US imports,” NITI Aayog said in its report.

The Trump administration has decided to increase tariffs on 23 countries with most of the Asian countries facing higher tariffs than India.

“This opens up an opportunity for India to increase its exports to the US, especially of those commodities in which it has revealed comparative advantage,” SBI Research said.

According to sources, tariffs and market access in agriculture, dairy and automobiles sectors remain key areas of disagreements between India and the US.

“One of the significant costs by opening up the Indian agri and dairy sectors to the US would be threat to livelihoods of the Indian farmers, especially the small ones engaged in dairy production as the dairy sector is heavily subsidized in the US,” SBI Group Chief Economic Adviser Soumya Kanti Ghosh said in the research not.

Pointing to the Trump administration’s flip-flop on tariffs, Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) founder Ajay Srivastava said India should insist on a joint statement signed by two countries before announcing the trade deal.