Need for serious negotiations on US-India free trade agreement: Experts

Observing that India-US economic ties have not matched the soaring rhetoric of strategic pronouncements, eminent American experts have pushed for trade negotiation that is broad enough to encompass fundamentals of bilateral economic engagement.

The way forward is to begin now on serious negotiations for a US-India free trade agreement, said Raymond E Vickery, former US Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Trade Development.

"As we look toward the future of our trade relationship and how it might be enhanced, the FTA is the end game and we all know it is an aspirational goal, said Susan Ritchie, a former State Department official who managed digital economy policy issues including Internet, data flows, privacy, e-commerce, trade and telecommunications.

Vickery and Ritchie, who are now in private sector, pushed for India-US free trade agreement during a panel discussion on 'Economic and Immigration issues facing the US India partnership' organised by the US India Friendship Council at the US Capitol.

Noting that the list of differences between the two countries have increased in recent years, Vickery said the only way that these myriad trade conflicts can be solved and freer economic engagement again become the engine that pushes the relationship forward is to have a trade negotiation that is broad enough to encompass the fundamentals of economic engagement between India and the US.

"The resulting understanding can be called a 'free trade agreement', a 'trade and investment framework', 'trade promotion agreement', or one of the other euphemisms used to describe a freer movement of goods and services between the US and India. The important point is not what it is called, but what it does," Vickery argued.

"Perhaps the way to go at this point is a bilateral approach that can flush out the alternatives and provide broad enough scope for the tradeoffs that will be necessary. The reality is that the US-India economic engagement is underperforming in spite of the progress that has been made over the past 30 years."