Says $5.7bn in 2017 in the article and $6bn in 2018. All it wants is greater market access.
India - United States Relations
- Thread starter Butter Chicken
- Start date
That's the total trade under GSP, duty free exports were only $196 millions.
Indian economy is liberalizing and opening as fast as it can, some sectors can not be opened to US or EU or China (Dairy being one of the important example). We have 1.35 billion people to feed and if we open these sectors to other nations we will be putting livelihood of millions of families at risk. Unfortunately neither US nor EU want to understand this and keep pressuring us to open dairy and similar sectors for trade deal to conclude.
That's a poor job or sensationalism.
There are 3 things -
Total exports - $54 Billions
Exports under GSP scheme - $6 Billions
Zero tariff or Duty free exports under GSP - $196 million.
GSP is not a one sided free trade deal, maybe that's why you felt so uneasy that India was somehow exporting duty free goods but putting tariffs on US goods. This was also the reason I said you should learn about GSP first, it will clear all these issues and you won't have to depend upon crappy reporting.
I may have erred in saying Duty free goods were $190 millions, it could actually be very less as this figure is of benefits under zero tariff and reduced tariffs combined. In other words US would earn 200 Million dollars in import duty for these products from his own countrymen.
GSP withdrawal will not have much impact on India's exports: Commerce secy
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You're quoting the value of the duties, not the value of the duty-free goods exported. The figures in the article are for the total value of the goods.
This is your post:
India-US Relations
If you'd said, "the value of the duty on the duty-free exports would have been $196m," then it would have a different meaning. But the value of the duty-free exports themselves were circa $6bn 2017-2018. The reason it's important is that it's not just about the collection of duty, it's about the value of the goods that might otherwise be made in the US and the effect of that on GDP.
I corrected that in next post. $200 millions of duty increase on $6 Billion worth of goods is like 3% price hike if you average out. You wont even notice it in your bill, that is when price stays same, if exporters take a hit of 1% and government subsidize 2% ($125 millions) the increase in price will be zero.
3% increase is not big enough margin for local producers for import substitution, forget it's reflection on GDP of either countries, Indian GDP is almost 3 trillion, US is reaching 20 trillions, 200 millions is less than margin of error. I am being so dismissive of it because it's too small for any impact anywhere at all but it does take away a big carrot from US hands, they were already struggling for any leverage, giving up low impact high decibel GSP will reduce it further in trade negotiations.
It's surprising what difference tariffs can make and maybe there are tariffs at the other end that it wants removing, or other trade restrictions.
Why can't we grant some concessions to the US when they are supporting us at global platforms to confront the chinese? I had read an article that said India is too soft towards the Chinese and too hard on the US , we allow unfettered access to cheap Chinese goods but put restrictions on the US
That's partially true, Trade restrictions are mostly reciprocal and depend upon trading partner, you give less concession to rich partner and more to poor countries, same is followed by US and every other countries. We can't give same concessions to Nepal and USA, but yeah China has taken undue advantages of it and we have not acted more so because of our pusillanimity, we think if we make China dependent on us with big trade volume they are less likely to attack us and conflicts can resolve peacefully. This never meant having 50 billions 60 billions of trade gap. Another reason is bullying tactics of Trump and irrational demand where only and only USA benefits, we have postponed every retaliatory tariff for Steel Tariffs of USA on us years ago, forget any action against recent GSP status revoking. We have purchased more US goods, oil and defence equipment from US to bridge meager $20 billions of trade gap.
We are bending over backwards to accommodate Trump and USA even when US needs us way more than we need them in defence cooperation. If we side with them we will make China our enemy, we are not friends but why to make China enemy for heavily unreliable USA? They will leave you at your own, we recently had this experience when during Doklam conflict US didn't say a single word in our support. Japan has to come out for us to pressurize China otherwise we were left alone, this was when Modi was going full throttle in US camp, only after that we started valuing Russia again and talking to China and stopped aligning with US. We gave them everything they asked, inserting ourselves into South China Sea to what not and they didn't even boycotted BRI summit, India was alone in that. Do we want to partner with a country like that beyond a limit?
Americans are weird people
Pakistan gets away with Killing US soldiers
In Afghanistan and they do nothing For
Themselves
But want India to dump Russia