India was working hard to resolve outstanding trade issues with Trump administration

India and the Trump administration were working on resolving the outstanding trade issues as well as to clinch a trade deal, says External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. He said the focus of the talks was to iron out the differences before moving towards something bigger.

Participating in an interactive session at the FICCI’s annual general meeting, Jaishankar said New Delhi is hoping to have talks over it with the Biden dispensation. He pointed out that the US economy was largely a complementary one and that there was no fundamental clash of interests between the two countries, though there was some areas of overlap.

“There was a fairly serious negotiation between our government and the Trump administration on resolving the outstanding trade issues. I think the general thinking on both sides was “let’s deal with differences before we think of something bigger”,” the minister said. “For a variety of reasons, they didn’t close it out. I can tell you on our side, we were dead serious. We wanted to deal with those issues because we thought there was something much bigger that was in store for the relationship.”

But Jaishankar said it didn’t happen. And often when it comes to trade discussions, they are like business discussions between two governments, it is not a deal. “We made a very focused serious persevering effort, it didn’t get done this year. I do believe that in a very very basic way, the US is a complementary economy.” Jaishankar hopes that India has serious discussions with the US, once the Biden administration comes in.

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In 2019, the Trump administration terminated India’s designation as a beneficiary under the key GSP trade programme on the ground that it has not provided the US equitable and reasonable access to its markets. Export of certain goods to the US were previously allowed in duty-free category under a special trade scheme called the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). As such, the US had been seeking greater access to India’s huge poultry and dairy markets but New Delhi has some reservations over it.