External affairs minister S. Jaishankar has spelt out what most analysts have inferred since Monday night when US President Donald Trump announced on social media a trade deal with India “effective immediately”: That the exact agreement is still a work in progress.
Jaishankar met his American counterpart Marco Rubio and US treasury secretary Scott Bessent in Washington on Tuesday against the backdrop of the announcement of the trade deal.
Asked by ANI whether he had held talks on the deal, Jaishankar said: "It was not directly with me, because that is being handled by commerce and industries minister Piyush Goyal. The prime minister and the US President had a conversation, some announcements came out of it. Thereafter, a detailing of the trade negotiations is underway as we speak."
Asked about a timeline of the agreement, he said: "It is hard for me to say, and the commerce minister would know it better, because he is in direct engagement with the US trade representative..."
On Monday night, Trump announced on Truth Social that a trade deal had been clinched and that the tariff on Indian goods would be reduced to 18 per cent. The punitive tariff – 25 per cent over and above 25 per cent – was also scrapped.
The 18 per cent tariff is one of the lowest for Asian countries.
Trump also claimed that India had agreed to purchase $500 billion worth of US goods, switch to buying Venezuelan oil, and reduce tariffs on US imports to zero.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's social media post, which followed Trump's, and the Indian government's official comments on the trade deal made no mention of these claims. Neither side has made the details of the agreement public yet.
On Wednesday, commerce minister Goyal told Parliament: “Considering the important and diverse interests of both sides, it is natural that each side seeks to protect the critical and sensitive sectors of its own economy while ensuring the best possible outcome. During these negotiations, the Indian side has successfully ensured the protection of the interests of sensitive sectors, especially agriculture and the dairy sector.”
On Tuesday, US trade representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC: "We'll finish papering it [the deal with India], but we know the specifics, we know the details.”
He had added that India is maintaining some protection around agricultural goods.
The Opposition has attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over the deal, demanding to know the full details and accusing the Centre of selling out the interests of India’s farmers.
