New Delhi [India], March 5 (ANI): Ajay Sahai, Director General and CEO of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), said he sees US President Donald Trump's recurring statement against India- as a 'tariff king'- to be a negotiating posture.
"I personally feel that these kinds of statements are a kind of negotiating posture," Sahai told ANI, affirming that Indian leadership is quite capable of making a deal.
Sahai hopes India will be able to broker a preferential tariff arrangement with the US so that Trump's reciprocal tariff is not applied to India.
During the recent meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the two leaders resolved to expand trade and investment to make their citizens more prosperous, nations stronger, economies more innovative, and supply chains more resilient.
They resolved to deepen the US-India trade relationship to promote growth that ensures fairness, national security and job creation. To this end, the leaders set a bold new goal for bilateral trade - "Mission 500" - aiming to more than double total bilateral trade to USD 500 billion by 2030.
Referring to the Mission 500 aim, Sahai said it would entail that India will have greater facilitation of trade.
"Our Prime Minister has already travelled to the US. He talked about Mission 500 where we want to increase our exports from USD 200 billion to USD 500 billion, which also entails that we will have greater facilitation of trade," he said.
"We will also be looking into that Indian products may be given a kind of free of duty treatment, and we can also reciprocate by providing similar concessions to some of the US goods," Sahai said, when Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is in US for trade-related discussions. "These kinds of negotiations will definitely help."
Goyal's visit to the US follows Trump-Modi's plans to negotiate the first tranche of a mutually beneficial, multi-sector Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) by the fall of 2025. The two leaders had committed to designating senior representatives to advance these negotiations.
President Trump once again today named India and termed its tariff as "very unfair", as he announced reciprocal tariffs kicking in from April 2.
Since assuming office for his second term, President Trump has reiterated his stance on tariff reciprocity, emphasising that the United States will match tariffs imposed by other countries, including India, to ensure fair trade.
Sahai sees Goyal's sudden visit to the US as a "very proactive move" of the government.
"We have followed the visit of the Prime Minister with the visit of the commerce minister...I personally feel that broad contours of the preferential tariff arrangement will be worked out, and probably soon we will see some concession flowing for the exporters on both sides," he said.
Meanwhile, the CEO of FIEO asserted that the tariff war between China and the US will definitely give other countries an advantage.
"To what extent they will be able to utilize that will depend on their competitiveness and will depend on the scale on which they operate," he added.
Trump has doubled the tariff on all Chinese imports to 20 percent from 10 percent. Those duties are on top of existing tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese goods.
China has retaliated against the US, slapping additional tariffs. China immediately retaliated with tariffs on American goods, threatening to ignite a damaging trade war. (ANI)
