Sergio Gor backs Piyush Goyal, denies reports India rejected fast-track trade deal with US | Today’s news
US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor on Monday dismissed a report that claimed India had rejected a fast-track trade deal with the US and was now waiting for a better deal.
“Fake news alert! No one denied anything. Both sides had a very constructive meeting and reaffirmed their commitment to complete the trade deal. We remain actively engaged,” Gor said in a post on the X social media platform.
Addressing Reuters, the news agency that published the report, Gor said: “Reuters – you can do better!”
The news agency published an analysis titled “Empowering India seeks better terms in US trade talks”, in which it claimed this, citing officials and analysts.
Gore’s comments come after India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal also dismissed the report on Monday.
Read also | Piyush Goyal calls India-US trade deal report “false, baseless and misleading”
What Piyush Goyal said
Goyal on Monday rejected the claims made in the report, saying in X’s post, “These reports are completely false, baseless and misleading.”
“I had fantastic meetings with USTR Jamieson Greer, @USTradeRep, when he visited Delhi in June. Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to an agreement that is balanced, makes commercial sense and delivers tangible benefits for businesses, farmers, workers and consumers in both countries,” Goyal said, adding, “Our teams remain fully engaged in achieving this goal.”
India’s commerce minister Rajesh Agrawal, a top official in the ministry, said: “The framework agreement is ready, whenever the time is right, it will be signed”.
That’s what the Reuters analysis claimed
Reuters claimed on Monday that “the two nations failed to finalize an interim trade deal during US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s visit to Delhi last month, despite expectations on both sides that a limited deal was within reach”.
“There was no agreement because Washington did not offer assurances on New Delhi’s key demands: a tariff advantage over competitors such as China and no new US tariffs on the deal,” the report said, citing an Indian government official briefed on the talks.
“Our position is clear – we have no intention of rushing into an agreement that is not on favorable terms or a compromise on red lines, such as ceding land to agriculture,” the official said, according to Reuters.
The agency also cited a US source familiar with the talks as saying Washington is of the view that India must earn the preferential treatment it seeks on trade provisions by making its own concessions.
The two Indian and American sources behind the report did not want to be named, the agency said, because the negotiations are confidential.
Read also | Prices of imported Scotch whiskey may drop by 5-10% after India-UK trade deal.
US tariffs on India
Like most countries, Indian goods entering the US are now subject to a 10% tariff. But the Trump administration is expected to impose steeper tariffs later this month as it examines excess industrial capacity. India has denied allegations of such excess capacity, Reuters reported.
Washington has proposed tariffs of up to 12.5% on dozens of countries, including India, over allegations that they have failed to curb trade in goods made with forced labour.
The Reuters report quoted another Indian official as saying that India was calculating whether some measures taken by the Trump administration could face legal or political setbacks.
This comes as 22 Democratic state attorneys general have already filed objections to the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs.
“India recognizes that delaying — or even abandoning — a rushed deal may be more prudent than committing to commitments whose costs could far exceed any temporary tariff relief,” Global Trade Research Initiative founder Ajay Srivastava, who is also a former trade negotiator, told Reuters.
