At meeting with PM Modi, Trump says trade deal with India very soon

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Updated: Jul 04, 2020 07:14 IST

India and the United States may soon sign a trade deal, President Donal Trump said Tuesday at his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We will have trade deal very soon,” Trump said at the bilateral meet with Modi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly after their mega show in Houston.

India had been hoping for a limited trade deal after the Trump administration made little headway negotiating an end to its prolonged trade war with China that began earlier this year.

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After the meeting Modi told reporters that he was happy with Petronet’s LNG deal with American energy company Tellurian Inc.

“As far as trade (India-US trade) is concerned, I’m happy that our Petronet signed an MoU of US$ 2.5 Billion investment in the energy sector,” Modi said.

A trade deal could partially reinstate India’s preferential market access to U.S. markets under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programme which Washington had revoked in June.

Before the US scrapped GPS programme, India had been the largest beneficiary of the programme, which allowed certain imports from 120 countries to enter the United States at zero tariff.

Trump has been pushing India over import tariffs on Harley Davidson motorcycles and had said that India’s decision to slash cut the rate by 50% was still “unacceptable”.

The US has also been nudging India to remove price caps for medical devices — stents and knee implants, Information and Communicaiton Technology (ICT) which the NDA government had announced in its first term.