India ‘working along same line’ as US-Indonesia trade deal: Trump

New York: US President Donald Trump stated that India is working on a trade deal along the same lines as the one he announced with Indonesia, which will provide the US with greater access to the Indian market.

Under the deal with Jakarta, there will be a 19 per cent tariff on imports into the US, but none on exports from the US to Indonesia, he told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

“India basically is working along that same line”, he said. “We’re going to have access into India”.

Negotiators from India and the US are working to reach a deal before the August 1 deadline Trump has set for making deals or face arbitrary tariffs.

While he has issued letters to several countries and the European Union threatening tariffs as high as 35 per cent if they don’t make a deal by that date, he has sent a similar warning to India.

It is not clear if he meant an exact duplication of the Indonesia deal, which would be a tough sell for India, or other levels of tariffs and other concessions by India.

If the bilateral trade agreement between the US and India under negotiation mirrors the Indonesian one, it would mean a 19 per cent tariff on India’s exports and none on imports from the US.

Trump also said that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could agree to a peace deal with Ukraine before the 50-day deadline, which would spare India and others from buying Russian energy products from the 100 per cent punitive tariff he has threatened.

Asked by a reporter about the September 2 deadline, he said, “I don’t think 50 days is very long, and it could be sooner than that”.

Trump announced on Tuesday that he was taking strong action against Russia because it has so far refused to agree to a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine.

One of those is the imposition of a 100 per cent secondary tariff on countries importing energy from Russia making India and others collateral victims of the actions directed against Moscow.

The aim of the punitive tariffs on importers of Russian energy is to force them to stop the purchases and to cut off funds to Moscow, and to make the buyers put pressure on Russia to make a deal.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s leader in the Senate, John Thune, said that he was holding off on bringing a bill that sought to impose a 500 per cent tariff on Russian energy importers.

Trump had expressed scepticism about the need for such legislation when he could impose sanctions himself.

On the deal with Indonesia and a prospective deal with India, Trump said, “You have to understand, we had no access into any of these countries. Our people couldn’t go in. And now we’re getting access because of what we’re doing with the tariffs”.

He said that Indonesia has high-quality copper and rare earth minerals that the US needs.

–IANS