India looking at preferential market access in US: Goyal

New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said India is looking at preferential market access for its products in the US and asserted that the country’s relations with America are “very robust” with a deep strategic partnership across technology, defence, trade and investment.

He said that India’s trade pact with the US is “best” as compared to its competitor countries.

“Our relations are very robust. We have a deep strategic partnership on several aspects, on technology, on defence, on trade and on investments, and our approach is that India should get preferential market access,” Goyal told reporters here.

The country, he said, is sitting on a “very sweet spot” in promoting trade with the US.

“Being the world’s fastest growing economy, India holds huge promise for investors who will continue to look at the India opportunity in greater numbers and greater value in the future,” he added.

On March 27, the minister held a meeting with the US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer in Yaounde, Cameroon and discussed the next steps in the India-US bilateral trade agreement (BTA) negotiations.

The two met on the sidelines of the 14th ministerial conference (MC14) of the World Trade Organisation.

In February, the two countries announced that they had finalised a framework for the first phase of the bilateral trade agreement. It has not yet been signed.

India and the US announced a trade deal on February 2. A joint statement for the same was released on February 7. According to the framework, the US had agreed to reduce tariffs on India to 18 per cent.

However, the tariff architecture in the US has changed following its Supreme Court ruling against President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. After that, the US President imposed 10 per cent tariffs on all countries for 150 days from February 24.

In view of these changes, a meeting of the chief negotiators of India and the US has been postponed. They were scheduled to meet in February to finalise the legal text of the pact.