'India is negotiating with the US on a trade deal', Foreign Minister S Jaishankar spoke on tariff related concerns

Foreign Affairs Minister S Jaishankar weighed in with his views on the US's retaliatory tariffs slapped on the countries of the world in response. It is his view that the effect of Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs is not yet clear. New Delhi's approach in this regard is to seal a bilateral trade deal with Washington before the end of this year, according to the Foreign Affairs Minister.

Referring to the US policy on tariffs, Jaishankar stated that since Trump became President for the second term, India is perhaps the sole nation that has managed to clinch a trade deal with Washington. The foreign minister made the comments just hours after Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on nearly five countries, with India among them. Imposing the tariffs triggered vast trade disruption as well as concerns abouta  global economic slowdown.

India is among the countries that have adopted a cautious approach in response to the potential shock to the global economy and said it is negotiating with the Trump administration on a bilateral trade agreement (BTA). "I don't think it is possible to talk about what the impact will be, because we don't know. What is our strategy? I think it is very clear," Jaishankar said during an event. "We have decided that we will soon engage with the Trump administration on these issues. We have agreed that we will try to finalize the negotiations on the bilateral trade agreement by the end of this year," he said.

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

He said, "In our case, our strategy has a goal. The goal is to see if it is possible to actually deal with this situation by reaching a bilateral trade agreement. And I would like to say this interesting thing that this has been our objective for a long time." Jaishankar said that the 'current situation' has created conditions for more serious negotiations on a trade deal.

He said, "But if you look at the first term of President Trump, we were actually negotiating a trade agreement, which did not come to fruition. If you look at the Biden administration as well, we discussed trade possibilities and eventually arrived at initiatives like IPEF." As part of Washington's long-term vision for the Indo-Pacific region, then US President Joe Biden launched the ambitious Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in May 2022.

The initiative was aimed at deeper cooperation among like-minded countries in areas such as clean energy, supply-chain resilience and digital trade. "They (the Biden administration) were very much against having a bilateral agreement. From India's perspective, actually doing something bilaterally with the US is not in any way a negative or undesirable situation," Jaishankar said. On the contrary, it is something that has been our objective for a long time, he said.