The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: India has agreed to cut its tariffs “way down” because “somebody is finally exposing them for what they’ve done”, US President Donald Trump claimed on Friday (February 7).
His remarks came hours after New Delhi when asked about Trump’s threat of reciprocal tariffs against India simply said that the two sides were looking to carry on with negotiations for a trade deal that was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington.
Addressing the media in his Oval Office, Trump said that India charges “massive” tariffs on American goods.
“You can’t even sell anything into India, it’s almost restrictive–it is restrictive. You know, we do very little business inside,” Trump said.
He continued: “They’ve agreed–by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody’s finally exposing them for what they’ve done.”
This was the latest instance of the US president railing against Indian tariffs after assuming office. He had on Wednesday threatened to mirror India’s tariffs, including of the non-monetary kind, starting April 2.
When asked for comment on Trump’s remarks made on Tuesday, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reiterated that India and the US were working to advance talks on a mutually beneficial trade deal.
“I would like to repeat what we had mentioned there. Our objective through the BTA [bilateral trade agreement] is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade across goods and services, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries,” said Jaiswal.
“So, that is how we look at the issue of tariff as far as India-US is concerned,” he added.
Jaiswal gave a similar response when asked if Washington had assured India against reciprocal tariffs or if the Modi government saw Trump’s remarks on Wednesday as an “act of bad faith” if negotiations were ongoing.
He did say that Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal was in America from Tuesday to Thursday, where he met his “counterparts to take forward our mutual discussions on trade tariff and other issues”.
Goyal’s counterpart in Washington, Howard Lutnick, appeared at the India Today Conclave via videoconference on Friday, where he argued that India ought to lower the tariffs it imposes on US goods.
“It’s time to do something big, something grand, something that connects India and the United States together but does it on a broad scale, not product by product, but rather the whole thing. Let’s bring India’s tariff policy towards America down, and America will invite India in to have really an extraordinary opportunity and relationship with us,” said Lutnick.
When told by India Today journalist Rahul Kanwal that dialling back tariffs on agricultural products would amount to a political self-goal for the Modi government, Lutnick said that India’s agricultural market “has to open up, it can’t just stay closed”.
“Now, how you do that and the scale by which you do that–maybe you do quotas, maybe you do limits, you can be smarter when you have your most important trading partner on the other side of the table,” Lutnick said.
The commerce secretary added: “You can’t just say, as you said, ‘oh, it’s off the table’; that’s just not an attractive way of doing business.”
It has been noted that India has long sought to protect its agriculture industry in order to support its small farmers.
The “some of the highest tariffs in the world” that India charges, according to Lutnick, will “require a rethinking of the relationship, the special relationship between India and the United States”.
He also said that India must wean itself away from heavily relying on Russia for its military needs.
During Modi’s visit to Washington last month, both sides agreed to finalise a bilateral trade deal addressing “concerns”, the first tranche of which was to be negotiated before fall this year.
Trump had said that India would be increasing its purchases of US weapons this year by “billions of dollars”.
“We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters,” he added, even as New Delhi sought to downplay the statement.
Of talks on tariffs during the bilateral visit, Trump later recalled his conversation with Modi as follows: “And I said, ‘You know what we do?’ I told Prime Minister Modi yesterday – he was here. I said, ‘Here’s what you do. We’re going to do – be very fair with you.’ They charge the highest tariffs in the world, just about.”
“I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging.’ He [Modi] goes, ‘No, no, I don’t like that.’ ‘No, no, whatever you charge, I’m going to charge.’ I’m doing that with every country.”