Home > Foreign Trade > Full Story

US expresses concern over trade imbalance with India

Agencies - Mumbai

Expressing concern over the growing trade imbalance between US and India, outgoing US ambassador to India Mr Robert D Blackwill said American exports to India have languished at low levels since 1997. “While Indian products and services do increasingly well in the US market, American exports to India have reached low levels and trade between both the nations continues to under perform in the US-India relationship”, Mr Blackwill told a press conference here.

“India is only our 25th largest trading partner while the US is India’s single largest export market”, Mr Blackwill said adding that in 2002 bilateral trade totalled US$ 15 billion, of which Indian exports to the US were US$ 11.7 billion, three times more than US exports to India of US$ 3.7 billion. “We remain concerned about the growing trade imbalance, especially the underlying market access asymmetries between the two economies,” he noted. He said to help build a more robust economic relationship, the US president Mr George W Bush and the Indian prime minister Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee in November 2001 re-launched the US-India economic dialogue.

“While in the past year, we have enjoyed modest success in implementing it, the June visit of the commerce minister Mr Arun Jaitely to Washington will be an important opportunity to advance this discourse”, Mr Blackwill said.

Mr Jaitley is scheduled to have meetings with Ambassador Zoellick at the office of the US trade representative and others in the administration on the full range of bilateral and multilateral economic issues before both the countries, the US ambassador said.