{"id":67772,"date":"2026-02-08T01:03:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T01:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/can-the-india-eu-trade-deal-put-india-us-talks-into-fast-gear\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T01:03:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T01:03:35","slug":"can-the-india-eu-trade-deal-put-india-us-talks-into-fast-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/can-the-india-eu-trade-deal-put-india-us-talks-into-fast-gear\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the India-EU trade deal put India-US talks into fast gear?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Originally posted on : EUR News, Latest Stories & Analysis | Invezz )<\/b>
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India and the European Union signed a long-awaited free trade agreement<\/a> on Tuesday, billed by officials as the \u201cmother of all deals\u201d, prompting renewed scrutiny of how \u2014 or whether \u2014 the pact alters Washington\u2019s approach to its own stalled trade negotiations with New Delhi.<\/p>\n

The timing of the landmark trade deal, nearly two decades in the making, has been flagged by experts as especially significant. <\/p>\n

It comes as India, a long-term US ally, has been hit with merciless tariffs from Washington \u2014 50% on goods imported from India, including 25% in \u201cpunitive tariffs\u201d for continuing to buy oil from Russia.<\/p>\n

Additionally, in recent days, Trump threatened to impose 10% tariffs on European allies for standing up to him over his planned takeover of Greenland. <\/p>\n

Although he later retracted the threat in Davos and said the tariffs were \u201csuspended,\u201d the episode left long-time allies across the Atlantic even more uneasy than before.<\/p>\n

Why the India-EU trade deal begs a US question<\/h2>\n


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The aforementioned reasons, experts say, have caused \u201caccelerated\u201d talks between India and the EU in the last few months, with the announcement of the deal capping those talks.<\/p>\n

However, more importantly, the US also finds a mention in commentary about the EU\u2013India trade deal, as the country is pursuing its own trade agreement with India, which has been mired in several delays, with multiple informal deadlines having been missed and no clarity whatsoever on when it will materialise.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, observers were on the lookout for what Trump might have to say after the deal was signed on Tuesday amid much pomp and show.<\/p>\n

However, no commentary was forthcoming.<\/p>\n

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, however, did attack the India\u2013EU free trade agreement.<\/p>\n

Speaking to ABC News, Bessent defended the Trump administration\u2019s decision to slap steep tariffs on Indian goods, linking them directly to India\u2019s energy trade with Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have put 25 per cent tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. Guess what happened last week? The Europeans signed a trade deal with India,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bessent pointed out that the Russian oil that goes into India is used to make refined products that are then bought by Europeans, which means \u201cthey are financing the war against themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n

Between Washington\u2019s tactlessness, Brussels\u2019 pragmatism and Indian agriculture<\/h2>\n


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\u201cWashington is certainly not likely to view this (the deal) very kindly, because the US has been desperately trying to open up markets using force rather than diplomacy, and it has really not succeeded,\u201d Biswajit Dhar, trade economist and former professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India, told Invezz.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Dhar added that Trump did not respect the sensitivities of any country, especially India, which has a complex economy, making it impossible to accept some of the conditions that Trump tried to impose.<\/p>\n

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We all know that agriculture is really the sticking point. Now, contrast that with what the EU did. It also had interests in agriculture in the beginning and wanted market access in agricultural products, but realpolitik really prevailed over everything else, and they allowed India to not offer tariff cuts on agriculture, which is how the whole thing went through..<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to reports, across multiple rounds of trade talks, Indian negotiators have consistently maintained that protecting the farm sector is a non-negotiable priority.<\/p>\n

The entry of cheaper imports from countries like the United States \u2014 where farms are larger, mechanised and heavily subsidised \u2014 could destabilise domestic crop prices and put smaller landholders at significant risk, with 86% of India\u2019s farmers operating on small and marginal holdings of less than two hectares.<\/p>\n

India has not included major agricultural commodities in any free trade agreement negotiated thus far.<\/p>\n

Can the EU\u2013India trade deal add urgency to US\u2013India trade talks?<\/h2>\n


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There is a mixed bag of expert opinion on whether, with major global powers aligning among themselves while the US is viewed warily, the country would accelerate talks to conclude the India\u2013US BTA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU\u2013India deal could even light a fire under efforts to conclude a US\u2013India trade deal and help to move negotiations forward on a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement, as US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed last year,\u201d said Mark Linscott<\/a>, Atlantic Council nonresident senior fellow on India.<\/p>\n

Linscott, however, maintains that while the India\u2013EU agreement may be interpreted as a response to the Trump administration\u2019s tariffs and tariff threats, \u201cthere is no reason it should undermine the US trade relationships with either the EU or India\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hardeep Singh Puri, India\u2019s minister for petroleum and natural gas, told CNBC on Tuesday that the India\u2013US trade deal was at a \u201cvery advanced stage\u201d, even as he admitted he did not know when it would be concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m told by the people who are in it [the negotiations] that it\u2019s at a very advanced stage, and I\u2019m hoping that, sooner rather than later, it will also see the light of day,\u201d he added of the US deal.<\/p>\n

Citi analysts said on Wednesday that markets would be \u201ckeenly watching immediate repercussions\u201d of the EU\u2013India deal on India\u2013US tariff talks.<\/p>\n

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There would be hope that those negotiations might be fast-tracked now, though it remains to be seen whether Indian authorities would be in a better position to withstand the higher US tariffs, given the easier access to the large EU market.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, Dhar seeks to highlight that mere optics might not provide the US with enough fuel to hasten the talks, as the problem lies elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Dhar says that by making \u201cexaggerated promises\u201d to his constituencies during the 2024 presidential elections \u2014 especially farm lobbies \u2014 of opening up the Indian market for US produce, Trump has effectively \u201cboxed himself into a corner\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really can\u2019t move away from his campaign promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2024 presidential election, almost 78% of farming-dependent counties supported Trump, and Dhar has earlier written<\/a> that US farm lobbies representing corn, soybean and wheat interests have also been strongly lobbying the US government for access to the Indian market.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in terms of negotiating with India, agreeing to allow it to maintain higher tariffs on agriculture and deciding to revisit it at a later stage is not possible given the kind of dynamics that he himself has set in motion. So I don\u2019t see how the situation is going to change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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(Originally posted on : EUR News, Latest Stories & Analysis | Invezz ) India and the European Union signed a long-awaited free trade agreement on Tuesday, billed by officials as the \u201cmother of all deals\u201d, prompting renewed scrutiny of how \u2014 or whether \u2014 the pact alters Washington\u2019s approach to its own stalled trade negotiations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3947362359,"featured_media":67773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3947362359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}