India is put pressure for accelerated trade agreements with the United States and the EU, highlighting an emergency “degree”. The Minister of External Affairs, Jaishankar, underlines the need for rapid progress after years of negotiations.
In an interactive session at the World Summit of Technology, Jaishankar said that the United States under President Donald Trump has fundamentally changed his approach to engage with the world and has consequences in all key areas, especially in the technology sector.
Jaishankar’s remarks arise as Trump’s policy on prices has sparked massive commercial disruptions and fears of a global economic recession.
Trump on Wednesday announced a 90 -day break on his radical rates on all countries, with the exception of China.
In his remarks, Jaishankar, without sharing specific details of the negotiations between India and the United States on the proposed commercial pact, said that New Delhi was eager to conclude it as soon as possible.
“In a month of change in the administration, we have conceptually an agreement that we will make a bilateral trade agreement; that we will find a corrective that will work for both of us because we also have our concerns. And this is not an open process,” said the minister.
“We have done four years to speak with the first Trump administration. They have their vision of us and frankly, we have our vision of them. The main thing is that the agreement did not succeed,” he said.
Jaishankar also referred to India negotiations with the European Union for a free trade agreement.
“If you look at the EU, people often say that we have been negotiating for 23 years, which is not entirely true because we had big blocks of time when nobody spoke to someone else. But they tended to be very prolonged processes,” he said.
“This time, we are certainly intended for a very high degree of emergency. I mean, we see a window here. Our sales teams are really busy,” he said.
“These (Indian negotiators) are people very as well as their game, very ambitious about what they want to achieve,” he said.
“We try to speed up the other side in each case.
“My meaning is probably in terms of response from other parties-at least the United States has so far been fast enough to respond to everything that has been deposited. Now we have to see after April 2 how it resumes,” he said.
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