USTR Katherine Tai says U.S.-India relationship has reached latest heights

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the U.S.-India relationship is reaching latest heights because the two align “across all of the policy areas.”

While Washington has long seen potential in its trade relationship with Recent Delhi, “we just couldn’t work out the way to tap it,” Tai told CNBC’s Martin Soong on the sidelines of the B20 Summit in Recent Delhi, India. 

“So lots of my predecessors experienced quite a little bit of frustration working on this relationship and it wasn’t due to a scarcity of desire or a scarcity of trying,” Tai said. “It’s actually true that today, this relationship is experiencing latest heights.”

The U.S. and India are closer now than ever before, but that relationship might be further strengthened.

In June, the 2 countries agreed to terminate WTO disputes on certain U.S. products equivalent to walnuts and apples. The choice got here during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visit with U.S. President Joe Biden. 

“Lots of [these tariffs] have been pending for years and we have agreed to bury the hatchet on those,” Tai said. 

“So we’re consistently striving to outdo ourselves at every stage … not simply to resolve long standing tensions up to now, but now to show our minds to where the synergies are between our economies and the way we are able to complement one another’s strengths to construct out into the longer term,” she highlighted. 

In a joint statement in June, Modi expressed “India’s interest towards being recognized as a Trade Agreements Act-designated country by the US to further enhance the mixing of each economies and to further promote trade and investment between two countries.

While a conventional free-trade agreement might be “tremendously powerful in accomplishing certain goals” especially in liberalizing trade, Tai said that framework also comes with costs.

She explained that the U.S. and India are examining how they will adapt “approaches from a conventional, fully comprehensive liberalizing model, to at least one where we might be more strategic.”

The U.S. trade representative said Washington is in search of a “different sort of win-win consequence” in its relationship with India, “where we are able to work out how we are able to complement one another and make ourselves safer and resilient, and the way we are able to industrialize and develop.”

“I actually think that India could also be a really unique and adaptable partner for these purposes. Definitely sit up for seeing where we are able to go together with this,” Tai said.