To boost Indo-US trade, envoy Garcetti suggests lowering tariffs jointly

India is the “highest tariff” major economy, and New Delhi and Washington need to collaborate and lower tariffs to improve trade, US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said on Thursday.

Garcetti’s remarks come days after US president-elect Donald Trump threatened “reciprocal taxes” on countries including India, which he said charges “a lot” of tariff, if they levy high tariffs on American products.

“We need, together, to lower tariffs, not to see them go up,” Garcetti said at an event organized by the US-India Business Council (USIBC).

“We need, together, to increase trade and to make it more fair and equal. We need to, together, make sure that there’s training and talent that meets the needs of companies on both sides of the Indo-Pacific,” he added.

Garcetti said that as the two countries “become closer”, they are able to be “more blunt” with each other.

“I think that as you hear, as recently as yesterday, Trump talk about trade and how tariffs need to be done fairly, let us have honest conversations. I think it’s helpful for us to speak bluntly, but let us use that as a starting point to negotiate much more deeply than we do,” the Press Trust of India reported the US envoy as saying during an interactive session.

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar had said following Trump’s presidential win that India was not among the countries that is “nervous” by Trump’s return to the White House.

“I know today a lot of countries are nervous about the US. Let’s be honest about it. We are not one of them,” Jaishankar said last month at an event.

Trump has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a “great leader” and “a great man,” but has slammed India’s tariffs.

“Modi has done a fantastic job bringing India together. But India’s tariffs are some of the highest-even higher than China’s in many ways. They charge with a smile, but it’s still a charge,” he had remarked.