US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the trade agreement with India could not be reached because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not call US President Donald Trump. Lutnik talked about it in detail in Thursday’s ‘all-in podcast’, why the India-US trade agreement has not been reached yet? He said, “I will tell you a story about India.
I made the first agreement with Britain and we told Britain that they have to complete it by the next two Fridays. That is, the train will leave the station after the next two Fridays because agreements are being made with many other countries as well. You know who comes first gets first. President Trump makes the agreement step by step.”
Lutnick said that Trump acts this way, “because this way you get the motivation to move forward in the negotiations.” He said that after the agreement with Britain, everyone asked Trump which country would be next and the president talked about many countries, “but he mentioned India several times in public.” Lutnick said, “We were talking to India and we said to India, ‘You have three Fridays.'” He will have to complete this work.
He takes the final decision. They compromise. That’s why I said, ‘You have to involve Modi, everything is set, you have to get Modi to call the President.’ India felt uncomfortable doing that, so Modi didn’t call.” Lutnick said later that Friday, the US announced trade deals with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The US was negotiating with other countries and “assumed that India would complete the negotiations before them.” He said, “I had negotiated with them at a higher rate.” So now the problem is that the agreement was made at high rates.
Then India called and said, ‘Okay, we are ready.’ I said, ‘After three weeks, what are you ready for?” He said that many times it happens that the situation changes sometimes. In such ups and downs, some countries take wrong steps at the wrong time and they have to bear losses.
Lutnik said, “So it happened that India was in the wrong way at that time and they could not fulfill it (the agreement). He said, “That’s why all the other countries kept making agreements and India was left behind in this race.” Lutnick made this statement at a time when Trump recently said that “Modi knew that he was not happy with India buying Russian oil and that America could raise tariffs on India at any time.”
The US President made this statement during the negotiations on the bilateral trade agreement between the two countries. So far six rounds of negotiations have been held on the trade agreement. The agreement includes a framework agreement to resolve the 50 percent tariff on Indian goods entering the US.