United States President Donald Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. (File Photo)
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday said he expects India will be back at the negotiating table in the next one or two months “saying sorry” to try to sign the trade deal, as the US is the largest consumer in the world and because the “consumer is always right”.
“I think, yes, in a month or two months… India is going to be at the table, and they’re going to say they’re sorry, and they’re going to try to make a deal with Donald Trump. And it will be on Donald Trump’s desk how he wants to deal with(Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. And we leave that to him,” Lutnick said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Lutnick said that India does not want to open its market, stop buying from Russia, and leave the BRICS grouping. “They [India] are a vowel between Russia and China. If that’s who you want to be, go be it. But either support the dollar, support the US, support your biggest client, who is the American consumer, or, I guess you’re going to ban 50 per cent tariff,” he said.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal earlier this month expressed hope of concluding a bilateral trade agreement (BTA) with the US by November. However, no new round of talks with the US has been announced by either side after American negotiators deferred their visit to New Delhi, which was expected to take place on August 25. Government officials have also said that the removal of 25 per cent additional tariffs on India is key to resuming negotiations for a trade deal with the US.
Lutnick said that the “US is willing to talk” but asserted that the US is the largest consumer in the world.
“They [India] need to decide which side they want to be on. You know what’s funny is, remember the Chinese sell to us. The Indians sell to us. They’re not going to be able to sell to each other. We are the consumers of the world. People have to remember, it’s our $30 trillion economy that is the consumer of the world. So eventually they all have to come back to the customer, because we all know eventually the customer is always right,” Lutnick said.
He called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with the Chinese and Russian presidents at the SCO summit “bravado”.
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“You saw it in Canada, right? They put on retaliatory tariffs. They were all bravado. And what happened? Their GDP negative 1.6 per cent, unemployment rocketing towards 8 per cent and what did (Canadian Prime Minister Mark) Carney just do? He just finally, finally dropped his retaliatory tariffs. So I think what happens is it’s all bravado, because you think it feels good to fight with the biggest client in the world, but eventually your businesses are going to say you’ve got to stop this and go make a deal with America,” he said.
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