India, US could strike a ‘smaller’ trade deal in the coming weeks

INDIA and the US could strike a ‘smaller’ trade deal in the coming weeks, India’s ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu has said while acknowledging that the unprecedented challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic has been a ‘bit of a setback’ in moving ahead as the governments are focused on tackling the health crisis.

Addressing the virtual West Coast Summit of US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), Sandhu said that India’s supply of antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to the US has given the two countries enough confidence and have played an important foundation.

India, which is one of the major manufacturers of the drug, has sent several million doses of the HCQ to the US as part of its humanitarian gesture.

‘The top leadership has also been talking about it and I feel that perhaps in the coming few weeks, we should be able to strike the smaller trade deal,’ Sandhu said.

‘I continue to be very optimistic about the trade deal. I must mention that this current unprecedented challenge has given a bit of a setback in the sense that the focus of all the governments got to tackling the health crisis,’ Sandhu said.

He told the leaders of the top US companies that the trade officials from the two countries have been in constant communication over this issue.

The understanding between the leadership of the two countries was that they will go for the smaller one and then immediately start negotiations on the bigger trade deal, he said.

The current global situation, he noted, has made it even more opportune time to have this trade deal.

The trade deal also relates some of the top sectors for which ‘it will be a win-win situation’ for both sides.