With US President Donald Trump "temporarily suspending" country-specific reciprocal tariffs until July 9, India sees the three-month window as an opportunity to renew its push for a proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA) with the US and expedite finalisation of the first tranche of the trade deal.
The US Trade Representative noted that India's average applied tariff rate stood at 17% per cent, the highest of any major world economy.
'Reciprocal tariffs are not going to affect India except specific sectors and there are opportunities to capture.'
Geopolitical tensions, trade policy uncertainties, volatility in international commodity prices and financial market uncertainties pose considerable risks to India's economic growth in the coming year, the finance ministry cautioned on Wednesday. "Global trade continues to be affected by uncertainty in the policy environment... tariff-related developments in multiple countries have heightened trade-related risks, affecting investment and trade flows globally.
'Indian players in the digital market should not be dominated by global players, and they should not dominate the smaller players -- these discussions are on.'
Since India relies heavily on specialised imported fasteners for critical applications in industries, such as automobiles, aerospace, electronics, and defence, their sudden unavailability will jeopardise production.
'And America will invite India in to have really an extraordinary opportunity and relationship with us.'
I'...additional concessions, such as opening government procurement, reducing agricultural subsidies, weakening patent protections, and allowing unrestricted data flows -- demands India has resisted for decades.'
'Every Indian should move to an EV, and the government should not buy any fossil fuel cars. The government should become the first driver of EV adoption.'
The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Grameen has the highest unutilised amount (Rs 13,111 crore) compared to any other centrally sponsored scheme.
'The US has agreed to negotiate with us a mutually beneficial bilateral trade agreement, which will go for reduction of tariffs on both sides so that our trade can grow.'
For the first time, the government is likely to dip into the Oil Industry Development Fund (OIDF) to finance part of its fertiliser subsidy programme for 2025-26, according to official sources. The finance ministry has accounted for Rs 23,000 crore in the FY26 Budget as net additional resources to be drawn from dedicated reserve funds, including the OIDF, the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Fund, and the Universal Service Obligation Fund.
The interest rate on these schemes have remained unchanged for over a year now.
Ahead of the visit, officials from key government departments held intense discussions to identify key trade-related proposals.
'We are getting to understand the mind of this generation.' 'Minor tweaks are being made to ease the process as we go along.'
'For the Indian economy to maintain a growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent, it needs large foreign direct investment coming in, and that's mainly coming from the US.'
'Spend, but create assets, spend but make sure that people benefit from it.' 'This has been a beautiful guiding principle. And I think as a finance minister I owe so much to the prime minister for keeping this path clear before us.'
'Our attempt to honour the taxpayer has been since 2014 and more actively since 2019-2020 onwards.'
'We have to be prepared for the larger disruption that is likely to take place.'
'Nearly 10 million people will benefit from the increase in the rebate limit for those earning up to Rs 12 lakh.' 'We expect all that money will come back into the economy in either savings, consumption, or investments.'
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