Farmers won’t have cause for complaint once India-US deal text is out: Piyush Goyal
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Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said farmers and small businesses will have no reason to worry once the full text of the proposed India-US trade deal is made public, asserting that sensitive sectors have been safeguarded during negotiations.
“The final text has yet to be inked, so I do not want to pre-empt it,” Goyal said at the Global Economic Cooperation Summit held in Mumbai. “My farmers are fully protected. Our MSMEs are fully protected… not a single one will have cause to complain once the full text is out.”
He stressed that India negotiates “from a position of strength” and that the foundation of recent trade agreements has been “trust.” “India doesn’t engage as a meek country. We are negotiating for the future,” he said, adding that the government has been clear that “our small traders, marginal fishermen, marginal farmers… cannot compete with the mechanised dairies of the West.”
He continued by saying that as the income gap between the US and India is huge, the competitiveness changes.
“The US is a $90,000 per capita economy. We are $3,000 per capita. I have said it [that] you can’t get anything more competitive than what India can do. What they can provide is technology, GPUs, and equipment for high-quality quantum computing. These items from America are absolutely essential for our growth."
On India signing nine agreements in four years
Goyal said India has signed nine trade agreements in the last four years, describing them as pacts built on trust and mutual benefit.
“These trade agreements have been negotiated on the basis of trust. We are negotiating for the future. Free trade agreements are all for the future. What we are offering is an opportunity to participate in India’s future,” he added.
He said India is poised for what he described as an unprecedented expansion in the coming decades.
“We will be adding $26 trillion to our economy. We have never seen this kind of rapid growth in history, and never in the future,” he said, citing structural reforms and sustained economic momentum.