‘Modi government working to make America great again’: Congress as US deal fact sheet lists pulses

The Opposition on Tuesday questioned the Union government after the White House released a fact sheet about the India-United States trade deal, mentioning Indian tariff cuts for US pulses.

The fact sheet released by the Donald Trump administration said that New Delhi will eliminate or reduce tariffs on “all US industrial goods” and a wide range of American food and agricultural products, “including dried distillers’ grains, red sorghum, tree nuts, fresh and processed fruit, certain pulses, soybean oil, wine and spirits and additional products”.

The Congress said that the joint statement released by India and the US on Saturday had not mentioned “certain pulses”.

Moreover, the party’s publicity chief Pawan Khera said that the joint statement had stated that red sorghum imports would be “for animal feed” and that this “qualification [had] now vanished” from the US fact sheet.

“So in just three days – US time – pulses have quietly entered the deal, and usage conditions on red sorghum have disappeared,” Khera said.

“What [Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal] presented at his press conference was not a final or exhaustive list,” the Congress leader said. “It now looks like a rolling, expandable inventory, gradually widened to serve American export interests at the cost of Indian farmers.”

Khera added, “Modi government is working to Make America Great Again.”

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said that the US through its fact sheet had “hammered again on its points regarding Russian oil and agricultural products”.

“There is no escape for India to mask it as an agreement rather than being coerced and forced order from US,” the Rajya Sabha member added.

In screenshots of the fact sheet in her social media post, Chaturvedi highlighted a sentence saying that Trump had agreed to scrap the additional 25% levy on imports from India “in recognition of India’s commitment to stop purchasing Russian Federation oil”.

Indian goods had been facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August for purchasing Russian oil. Trump had on Saturday removed the additional 25% punitive levy, bringing the effective US tariff rate on Indian imports down to 18%.

This was after India and the US agreed on a framework for the interim trade deal on February 2. The agreement had reduced US tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from 25%.

An executive order issued by the White House on Friday had also stated that the 25% punitive tariff was being withdrawn as New Delhi had committed to stop “directly or indirectly” importing Russian oil.

On Monday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri reiterated New Delhi’s position that decisions on importing oil will continue to be guided by “national interests”. The foreign secretary, however, did not make a direct reference to Washington’s claim that New Delhi has committed to ending purchases of Russian oil.

After the joint statement was released on Saturday, the Opposition alleged that the trade agreement would be “heavily tilted in favour of the US” and that the deal amounted to a surrender by the Narendra Modi government.

Farmers’ interests protected, claims Centre

Goyal had on February 4 claimed in Parliament that the interests of sensitive sectors such as agriculture and dairy would be protected under the trade deal.

On Sunday, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that “no product that could harm [Indian] farmers has been included in the agreement”.

He said that there had been no Indian tariff concessions on products such as soybean, corn, rice, wheat, sugar, coarse grains, poultry, dairy, banana, citrus fruits, green peas, chickpeas, mung beans, oilseeds, among others.

“Hulled grains, flour, wheat, corn, rice, millet, potato, onion, peas, beans, cucumber, mushrooms, pulses, frozen vegetables...will not come to India,” the minister had said.