US wants India to eliminate trade barriers for American companies

08 May 2019 Evaluate

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said the US wants India to eliminate trade barriers for American firms and remove data localisation restrictions. He also expects that the new government will address these issues. He said “we applaud India’s commitment to addressing some of these barriers once the next government is formed in the June. He also alleged that India imposes very high import duties on goods like automobiles, motorcycles, agri-products and alcoholic beverages.

 US Commerce Secretary said India imposes bound tariff rates-maximum import duty India can charge under global trade rules of WTO-on agricultural products at the average of an incredible 113.5 percent and some are as high as 300 percent and added that they are way too high. However, India’s trade experts counter this by saying that India is not a ‘tariff king’ and it has all the right to take appropriate measures to protect the interest of specific sectors like agriculture.

Referring to trade imbalance with India, he said the US is India’s largest export market, accounting for something like 20 percent of the total. He also indicated that in 2018, the bilateral trade between the two countries stood at $142 billion, up by about $16 billion from 2017. In the services sector also, US has a trade deficit with India and last year it was $3 billion. He also said “We generally have services surplus with most countries. But in the case of India, the deficit is largely due to IT services.”

Besides, Ross stated that India jumped 23 places in the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business global rankings in 2018, but it still ranks 77 out of 190 countries. So, he said there is lots of room for further improvement. He also mentioned that yet today, India is only the US' 13th largest export market due to overly restrictive market access barriers. He also expressed confident that US technology and expertise can play an important role in serving India’s critical development needs, as India is pursuing a range of development priorities, including revitalisation of urban infrastructure.

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