S Jaishankar says India engages with US to seal trade deal as Trump's tariff comes into effect

The impact of US President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs is not yet known and New Delhi's strategy to deal with the situation is to firm up a bilateral trade pact with Washington by fall of this year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday.

In the first detailed response to the US policy on tariff, Jaishankar said India is perhaps the only country to reach an understanding with Washington to seal a trade deal after Trump assumed the presidency for the second time.

The external affairs minister's comments came hours after Trump's sweeping tariffs against around five countries, including India, came into force triggering massive trade disruptions and fears of a global economic recession.

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India is among the countries that have adopted a cautious approach in reacting to potentially seismic action, saying it is engaged with the Trump administration on the bilateral trade agreement (BTA).

"I don't think it's possible to speak about what would be the impact, because we don't know. What is our strategy? I think that's pretty clear," Jaishankar said at News 18 Rising Bharat Summit.

"We decided that we will engage the Trump administration early on this set of issues and we were very open with them, very constructive with them as they were with us, and what we agreed to do was to try to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement by fall of this year," he said.

Following talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump in Washington DC in February, the two sides announced to negotiate the first tranche of the BTA by the fall of 2025.

"I think we are the only country after President Trump has assumed presidency the second time, which has actually reached such an understanding in principle," Jaishankar said.

He said every country in the world today is fashioning its own strategy to dealing with the United States and that India's goal is to strike a trade pact with the Trump administration.

"In our case, our strategy has a goal. And the goal is to see whether it's possible to actually deal with this situation by concluding a bilateral trade agreement. And I should add that in an interesting way, this has long been our objective," he said.

Jaishankar said the "present situation" may have created the circumstances for such a serious conversation on the trade deal.

"But if you look at President Trump's first term, we were actually negotiating a trade deal which could not fructify, and if one looks even at Biden's administration, we discussed trade possibilities and we ended up with the IPEF initiative," he said.

In line with Washington's long-term vision for the Indo-Pacific, then US President Joe Biden launched the ambitious Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in May 2022.

It was an initiative aimed at deeper cooperation among like-minded countries in areas like clean energy, supply-chain resilience and digital trade.

"They (the Biden administration) were very averse to doing a bilateral agreement. From the Indian perspective, actually working out something bilaterally with the United States is not at all a sort of a negative or a sort of an unwanted situation," Jaishankar said.

Also read: India keen to close bilateral trade agreement with US despite tariffs: Jaishankar

On the contrary, it is something which has long been our objective, he added.