New Delhi: A Senior Fellow at a New Delhi think tank said on Tuesday that the US dropping zero-tariffs status for India will not fundamentally change the trade relations between the US and India.
Abhijit Mukhopadhyay from the Observer Research Foundation added that he was half expecting that other countries will be targeted by America after the US and China trade tension intensified.
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He added that he believed the decision for the US to drop India's preferential status was unilateral because the Indian government is serious about cutting down the American trade deficit.
India's commerce ministry said on Tuesday that it won't try to hold onto its preferential zero-tariffs status with the United States after Washington decided to drop it from its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) programme.
The GSP programme gives developing countries duty-free treatment for exports of thousands of products.
It is meant to help such countries grow their economies by encouraging trade.
The decision reflected a failure of the two sides to come to agreement on various trade issues, but is not one India will try to fight, an official from India's commerce ministry said.
The ministry added that India has already outgrown the GSP programme as the savings on tariffs amounted to only 190 million US dollars a year.
(Inputs from AP)
