India "Losing Trust" In Partnership With US: Amitabh Kant On Tariff Move

The trust built up between India and the US for over two decades is bound to b pulled down by the pejorative comments and tariff moves of US President of Donald Trump, former Niti Aayog chief and G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said today. 

In an exclusive interview with NDTV, Mr Kant said, "What Donald Trump has done, by his harsh use of words, including saying that the Indian economy is a dead economy, is that Indians are increasingly losing trust in the United States' ability to be a reliable partner for India in the long run".

The US President, demanding that New Delhi stop oil imports from Russia, had doubled the tariff on Indian imports in crucial sectors earlier this month, stacking up 25 per tariff on top of 25 per cent he had imposed in July. 

He had also said like Russia, the Indian economy is dead. 

"I don't care what India does with Russia," Donald Trump had said in a social media post. "They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world," the post read.

India, Mr Kant insisted, should maintain its strategic autonomy and never compromise.

"I think simply by bullying and putting you under pressure, India should never compromise. We must maintain strategic autonomy. We never did this even during the Cold War, so there's no question of doing it now," he said. 

India has declared the US President's action "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable". 

"India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interests," the foreign ministry categorically said in one of its strongest statements.

What Donald Trump's tariff move amounts to is an opportunity for India "to bring in radical reforms in our own economy," and "diversify our exports" in a big way, Mr Kant said. 

"We need to become far more globally competitive... There's a lot of homework to be done by us in terms of labor reforms, in terms of reducing the cost of energy, so on, so that making GST far more efficient, reducing personal taxes, many other things, including ensuring bringing down the statutory liquidity ratio so that your interest rates can come down, so that you are able to then ensure that your producers are able to export and penetrate global markets," he enumerated. 

But also, the US being a "critical market", India should "try and work towards a win-win solution," he added.