India says ‘no commitments’ to tariff cuts after Trump claims

India says it has not committed to slashing import duties on US products, days after President Donald Trump announced that New Delhi had agreed to “cut their tariffs way down”.

Only weeks into his second term, Trump has upended global trade, targeting friends and foes alike.

He has also blamed all trading partners of “unfair” practices, and has announced reciprocal tariffs on many countries, including India, to begin from next month.

Trump once again railed at India’s “massive tariffs” last week.

“You can’t sell anything into India, it is almost restrictive,” Trump said.

“They have agreed, by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody is finally exposing them for what they have done,” he added.

But the Indian government told a parliamentary panel that “no commitments had been made to the US on the issue,” a report in The Times of India newspaper said Tuesday.

More time sought

The government “has sought time until September to address the issue that is being repeatedly flagged by the American president,” it added.

India’s commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal “said that India and the US were working towards a mutually-beneficial bilateral trade agreement, focusing on long-term trade cooperation instead of merely seeking immediate tariffs adjustments”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited the White House last month, has an acknowledged rapport with Trump, who said he shares a “special bond” with the Indian leader.

Modi said the world’s largest and fifth-largest economies would work on a “mutually beneficial trade agreement” to be sealed “very soon”.

While the United States is a crucial market for India’s information technology and services sectors, Washington has made billions of dollars in new military hardware sales to New Delhi in recent years.

Trump could visit India later this year for a summit of heads of state from the Quad — a four-way grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.