President Donald Trump stressed that India has expressed its willingness to reduce its customs definitions in a deeper way, after he intensified his pressure on New Delhi to reduce the commercial barriers he described as imposing unfair costs on American companies.
“They have agreed. By the way, they now want to reduce their customs definitions significantly,” Trump said in a speech on the US economy on Friday evening.
Economic pressure
The Indian Ministry of Commerce did not respond to requests to comment on these statements, as it came outside the official working hours.
Maintaining Indian access to the American market is a top prime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially as new US customs duties are approaching next month, which may affect India’s exports to the United States.
The value of bilateral trade between the two countries was $ 127 billion in 2023, which made the United States the largest commercial partner of India, which puts increasing pressure on New Delhi to reach an agreement that protects its economic interests. The two leaders had agreed earlier to raise the level of trade exchange to $ 500 billion by 2030.
Indian concessions
The Moody government has already taken several steps to calm commercial tensions with the Trump administration, as it recently agreed to large -scale discounts in customs tariffs on many products, including luxury and whiskey motorcycles, as well as pledges to increase Indian purchases of American energy and weapons.
Indian officials also discussed the possibility of reducing customs duties on a range of products, including cars, some agricultural products, chemicals, basic drugs, some medical devices and electronics, according to Bloomberg reports last month.
These developments come at a time when global trade is witnessing major disturbances due to commercial wars, tariff threats, and supply chains shocks, which affects companies’ business and increases economic uncertainty.
