Thaw after days of ruckus as Budget debate begins in LS

Opposition lawmakers on Tuesday criticised the government over the India-US trade agreement as the Lok Sabha finally took up a debate on the General Budget after week-long disruptions, with Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor describing the deal as a “pre-committed purchase agreement” and Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee claiming it will “further marginalise Indian farmers.”

- HT Correspondent

Initiating the debate, Tharoor said: “While India may have obtained tariff reductions of one or two percentage points, no East Asian economy has agreed to deliberately dilute its trade surplus with the US through guaranteed purchase commitments.”

“It looks less like a free trade arrangement and more like a pre-committed purchase agreement that overturns every principle of reciprocity,” the former MoS for external affairs said.

When India’s total bilateral trade with the US stands at roughly $130 billion and a trade surplus of nearly $45 billion, the government has surprisingly promised to buy $500 billion worth of American goods over five years, which “effectively converts a surplus into a long-term deficit by executive assurance rather than by market demand,” he said.

“No major economy has ever neutralised its own trade leverage in this manner. While the US continues to impose import tariffs of up to 18% on Indian exports, we have committed ourselves to lower tariffs to near-zero levels, open agriculture, dilute data localisation, soften intellectual-property safeguards, and even redirect strategic energy imports, especially away from Russia, to meet purchase targets,” he said. “This is not strategic balancing; it is economic preemption.”