S Jaishankar: ‘India is in talks with America on trade agreement’, Foreign Minister said on tariff related concerns

New Delhi| External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar expressed his opinion on the retaliatory tariffs imposed by America on countries around the world. He said the impact of Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is not yet known. According to the External Affairs Minister, New Delhi’s strategy to deal with this situation is to finalize a bilateral trade agreement with Washington by the end of this year.

Speaking about US policy on tariffs, Jaishankar said that after Trump became President for the second time, India is probably the only country that has been able to agree a trade deal with Washington. This comment of the Foreign Minister comes hours after Trump implemented the comprehensive tariffs imposed against about five countries including India. The introduction of tariffs has caused widespread trade-related disruption and raised fears of a global economic downturn.

India is among the countries that have taken a cautious approach in reacting to a possible earthquake in the global economy and said it is in talks with the Trump administration on a bilateral trade agreement (BTA). Jaishankar said during an event, “I don’t think it is possible to talk about what impact it will have, because we don’t know”. What is our strategy? I think it’s pretty clear.” He said, “We have decided that we will soon hold talks with the Trump administration on these issues”. We have agreed that efforts will be made to finalize negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement by the end of this year.

After talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump in Washington in February, both sides had announced to negotiate the first installment of the BTA by 2025. “I think we are the only country, after President Trump became president for the second time, that has actually reached such an understanding in principle”, Jaishankar said He said that today every country in the world is making its own strategy to deal with America and India’s aim is to make a trade agreement with the Trump administration.

“In our case, our strategy has a goal”, he said. And the goal is to see if it is really possible to deal with this situation by concluding a bilateral trade agreement. And I would like to make the interesting point that this has been our objective for a long time” Jaishankar said the ‘current situation’ has created conditions for more serious negotiations on the trade agreement.

“But if you look at President Trump’s first term, we were actually negotiating a trade deal that didn’t come to fruition”, he said. If you look at the Biden administration as well, we discussed trade possibilities and eventually came to initiatives like IPEF” Under Washington’s long-term vision for the Indo-Pacific region, then-US President Joe Biden launched the ambitious Economic Framework for Indo-Pacific Prosperity (IPEF) in May 2022.

The initiative was aimed at deeper cooperation between like-minded countries in areas such as clean energy, supply-chain resilience and digital trade. Jaishankar said, “They (Biden administration) were very against making bilateral agreements. From India’s perspective, actually doing something bilaterally with the U.S. is by no means a negative or unwelcome situation” He said that on the contrary, it is something that has been our objective for a long time.