WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi said on Thursday the United States and India have set a target of doubling their bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030 and will work on concluding a mutually beneficial trade agreement very soon.
Modi made the comment at a press conference after a meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington. Modi said the U.S. and India would work together on artificial intelligence and semiconductors and focus on establishing strong supply chains for strategic minerals.
“We have … set ourselves the target of more than doubling our bilateral trade to attain $500 billion by 2030. Our teams will work on concluding very soon, a mutually beneficial trade agreement,” Modi said.
A Trump administration official told reporters earlier that U.S. and Indian officials were also moving forward with talks on a bilateral trade deal and they hoped to have a deal in place this year.
Trump told the news conference India had announced a reduction of tariffs on U.S. goods and said he and Modi would begin talks on disparities on trade with the goal of signing an agreement.
He said the United States was entitled to a level playing field and the U.S. trade deficit with India could be made up with the sale of oil and gas.
Trump said he had discussed India’s high tariffs during his first term, but was unable to extract any concessions. He said that under the new reciprocal tariffs system he announced on Thursday, the U.S. would simply charge the same tariff rates that India charged.
“It’s very hard to sell into India because they have trade barriers, very strong tariffs,” he said.
“We are, right now, a reciprocal nation… We’re going to have whatever India charges, we’re charging them. Whatever another country charges, we’re charging them. So it’s called reciprocal, which I think is a very fair way.”
(Reporting by Nandita Bose, Costas Pitas, Kanishka Singh, Simon Lewis, Andrea Shalal and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Leslie Adler and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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