US officials to travel to India next week to further US-India trade talks

Washington DC: A delegation of officials from the United States will travel to India next week to give final touches to the India-US trade deal. Sources told ANI that the trade talks have been very constructive and covered a wide range of issues that were pending on the table.

The list of important items that have been on the table have been resolved and a package is being worked upon, ANI has learnt. Commerce and Industry minister Piyush Goel visited Washington on a three-day trip from November 12 to hold talks with his American counterpart Robert Lighthizer the next day, on November 13, to seek a breakthrough on some key knotty trade issues.

On November 14, Goyal will also hold a high-level industry interaction with business and industry representatives in New York. From D.C., the minister further headed to New York. The minister and his US counterpart Ambassador Robert Lighthizer also had a telephonic conversation as a follow up of the meeting. Good discussions have been made in this visit and the rapport between the minister and his counterpart have resulted in a mutual understanding on equitable access for both sides, sources added.

Tensions on the trade front between the two countries had emerged in June after US President Donald Trump revoked preferential trade privileges, in response to which India imposed tariffs on 28 US products, including almonds and apples.

India was the biggest beneficiary of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), a programme designed to help developing countries sell to US consumers. On its part, India had also imposed retaliatory tariffs on 25 American goods, after the Donald Trump administration announced an end to the preferential trade treatment for India over the trade barriers.