Trade talks on, applied tariffs on US items not 'humongous': Goyal

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said on Monday that trade talks between India and the US were being held behind closed doors.

- DEV CHATTERJEE & JADEN MATHEW PAUL

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said on Monday that trade talks between India and the US were being held behind closed doors. Talking about India's tariffs on US imports, Goyal said, "If you look at the US, while our overall tariff may be 17 per cent, (there are) a lot of its products that we don't import at all. Our applied tariff to the US is probably 7 or 8 per cent. It's not humongous." The minister was speaking at the India Global Forum in Mumbai.

The minister further said that India's tariffs were a protection against unfair trade and a shield against economies engaging in practices like dumping. Goyal blamed China for the current global crisis, adding that China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the 1990s and early 2000s was a turning point.

He wondered aloud how US would implement the recently announced reciprocal tariffs because in the past there had been episodes of tariff barriers being circumvented by means such as goods entering a third country with lower tariffs for entry into the US, like it happened in the case of Vietnam after US President Donald Trump imposed higher tariffs on China during his first stint.

"We have not heard the end of the story yet," the minister said. "One cannot be sure how trade diversion will be safeguarded against."