Trade Deal With India Soon, says Trump

India may be the first country to go ahead with a bilateral trade deal with the US. On Wednesday President Donald Trump said that, “India is coming along great. I think we will have a deal with India. The Prime Minister was here three weeks ago and they want to make a deal. We’ll see what happens.”

Trump is only echoing what multiple US leaders from Vice President J D Vance to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said in the past days and weeks. On Tuesday Bessent said that, “It is easier to negotiate with India compared to many other countries…” He explicitly mentioned India’s “high tariffs” in this context and said it was easier to deal with high tariffs than the non-tariff barriers that are harder to negotiate.

On its part, India has been pragmatic in dealing with the emerging situation. Instead of reacting to the tariffs announced by Trump on “liberation day” in early April, India chose to hasten the trade talks. This position has been noted by the American side.

On Wednesday Trump also excoriated “the globalist elite” at a rally in Detroit, Michigan where he said that, “We are taking back our country from a sick political class that got rich selling America out and bleeding it dry.”

He also targeted China in his speech saying, “After decades of politicians who destroyed Detroit to build up Beijing, you finally have a champion for workers in the White House, and instead of putting China first, I am putting Michigan first, and I am putting America first.”

Trump has focussed his political energy on reducing America’s trade deficit with countries across the world. He does not want the US to be a “buyer of last resort” and instead wants to bring back manufacturing to the US. This has led to criticism about the difficulty, if not impossibility of turning the clock back. But ultimately most key US partners, such as Japan and South Korea, have agreed to re-negotiate trade relations with it. There are holdouts like Canada and the European Union that still think they can create “alternative trading arrangements.” But this will only help China that sits on a lode of investible surpluses as well as a huge pile of manufactured goods to sell at prices that can deindustrialise any country.

Bilateral talksDonald TrumpIndia-US relationsNarendra ModiNews Brieftrade tariffWeb Exclusive