Fifth Round of US Trade Talks End, Indian Team Comes Back: Report

The talks, held from July 14 to 17, focussed on sorting out aspects such as tariff cuts in agriculture and automobiles.

The Wire Staff

The talks, held from July 14 to 17, focussed on sorting out aspects such as tariff cuts in agriculture and automobiles.

fifth round of us trade talks end indian team comes back report

Photo: U.S. Army RDECOM/Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

New Delhi: Indian negotiators are coming back from the fifth round of trade talks with their US counterparts. According to a news report by BusinessLine, the latest round of talks held from July 14-17 focussed on sorting out aspects such as tariff cuts in agriculture and automobiles.

Talks may continue through the virtual mode for some time, BusinessLine quoted unnamed sources as saying.

Per the report, India is looking to get the US to remove the additional tariff of 26% that it recently imposed on India, and also easing extra tariffs on steel and aluminium (50%) and the auto (25%) sectors that the US has imposed so far. India has also reserved its right under the World Trade Organization norms to impose retaliatory duties.

Apart from issues related to agriculture and automobiles, aspects dealing with non-market economies, and SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment, and Technologies) also came up for the latest discussions, per the news report.

India is also seeking duty concessions for labour-intensive sectors, such as textiles, gems and jewellery, leather goods, garments, plastics, chemicals, shrimp, oil seeds, grapes, and bananas in the proposed trade pact.

Hindustan Times quoted sources as saying that the negotiations are being held based on two formally agreed frameworks. One is the joint statement of February 13 that proposed a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) by the fall of 2025, and the other is the terms of reference (TORs) agreed between India and the US on April 21 during US Vice-President JD Vance’s India visit.

India’s trade talks are being led by special secretary in the department of commerce, Rajesh Agrawal.

The negotiations aim to finalise an interim trade deal before August 1, when the suspension period of the tariffs imposed by the US ends.

On April 2, US President Donald Trump had announced reciprocal tariffs for several countries with which the US had a trade deficit with. Trump later suspended the tariffs till July 9, except for a baseline tariff of 10%. Finally the US announced a reciprocal tariff of 26% on India’s exports to the US.

This article went live on July twentieth, two thousand twenty five, at fifty-one minutes past four in the afternoon.

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