The trade between the US and India has increased substantially over a period of time.
The US has urged India to take strong measures to open up its economy furthermore in order to facilitate more bilateral trade. Raising concern over the $29.6 billion US trade deficit with India, Washington pushed India to liberalize its economy for a more balanced trade during the first US-India bilateral Trade Policy Forum (TPF).
The forum was attended by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Indian delegation led by Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu.
Issues including market access, intellectual property rights, and trade deficit were the important issues discussed in the meeting. Though both the nations are looking forward to strengthening mutual cooperation in different areas, the delegations from both side had different views on trade-related aspects.
“The United States pressed (India) for strong outcomes across a number of areas, including non-science-based barriers to agricultural trade, continuing and new regulatory and technical barriers to trade that impact sale of US high technology and other products, tariffs in a number of agricultural and industrial sectors, market access in services, and protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights,” the office of US trade representative said in a statement.
Lighthizer “expressed concern about the $29.6 billion US trade deficit with India, urging the Indian delegation to further liberalize the Indian economy to facilitate American exports,” added the statement.
But, Prabhu, in a tweet, noted that he had a positive discussion with Amb Lighthizer adding “Despite differences over minor issues, alignment on capturing the huge potential of bilateral trade.”
The trade between the US and India has increased substantially over a period of time. Both the countries have the potential to push bilateral trade furthermore covering all areas of the economy.
“To increase reciprocal trade, we will continue to seek to identify and address trade barriers related to goods, including manufactured and agriculture, services and intellectual property rights. The US objective is to increase trade flows between our two countries and to decrease our bilateral trade deficit,” Lighthizer said.
Since the Trump administration is following strict protectionist policies, Washington has decided to keep an eye on deficit trade relations of the US.
Despite the difference in views, the forum underlined the importance of continuing discussions and engagement to enhance the bilateral trade further and achieve the goals.
Praising the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Prabhu said that the initiatives will push India’s GDP growth rate above 8 percent and will double its economy to five trillion dollars in coming years. This will provide plenty of opportunities to the nations to strengthen their trade relations.