India, US want ‘early results’ on trade, says S Jaishankar

Trade negotiators from the two sides have engaged with each other with renewed urgency in recent days, around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting last week with President Donald Trump in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings.

India and the United States on Monday noted that while there had been positive developments in trade talks, they would like to now see some “early results” from their negotiators in view of the importance of the issue for the health of the larger relationship between the two countries.

India's external affairs S Jaishankar (AP File Photo)

“Both of us felt that while the trade issue had progressed, for the larger relationship, it was important that we see some early results,” external affairs minister S Jaishankar told reporters from Indian news publications after his meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Asked about President Donald Trump’s repeated offers of mediation on Kashmir, the minister said, perhaps more forthrightly than any other Indian official publicly, “India has been very clear (on this) for 40 odd years that we won’t accept mediation and that whatever has to be discussed has to be discussed bilaterally (by India and Pakistan).”

Speaking separately to American reporters before meeting Pompeo, Jaishankar defended India’s “sovereign right” to buy arms and and it will not be told by any state to buy, or not, from Russia. The context was India’s planned purchase of S-400 missile defense systems from Russian which could attract US sanctions. This issue, however, did not not come up in his meeting with Pompeo, and neither did the issue of Iranian oil sanctions.

At the start of that meeting President Trump had left no one in doubt of the importance he attached to trade when he described it as the “biggest” issue the two teams would be talking about. And he has pushed India publicly and privately to lower its tariffs and give more market access and cancelled India’s eligibility for a preferential trade scheme of zero tariff just days after Prime Minister Modi began his second term.

No details are available of the talks as both sides have been tight-lipped about them, but Trump has himself revealed that they are working on a “trade deal” in the near term and a “larger deal down the road a little bit”. But he did not draw out the distinction.

Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia group, who met the external affairs minister in New York last week, wrote in a note on Monday that “one (of them is a) ‘quick fix’ reducing tariffs, and (the other is a) broader modernization and aligned standards pact)”. He did not mention the source of this information.

Bremmer also seemed to indicate that talks are now under way “seriously” because the US trade representative had been more focussed on “his China portfolio”, which had been the administration’s top priority.

Jaishankar said he and Pompeo also discussed India’s “immediate region”, which could include Pakistan and Afghanistan but he did not not specify, the “larger Asian landscape”, the region east of Asia and South East Asia and some discussion on the Gulf”. This was their third meeting, yet.

The external affairs minister is also scheduled to meet US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, NSA Robert C O’Brien and the acting secretary for homeland security Kevin McAleenan. He is meeting all three for the first time, and, at his news briefing he noted with a tinge of regret not being able to meet with lawmakers as the Congress is not in session.

Congress, he said, is “normally a compulsory stop for us” because it has been the most supportive of all American institutions, going back by decades. He will be meeting Speaker Nancy Pelosi before they jointly headline a Gandhi anniversary event on Wednesday.