'Excited' about India trade deal: US dy secy of state Christopher Landau

Says US not to make same mistakes with India as it did with China

The United States (US) is excited about a trade deal with India that the two governments are working on, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on Thursday while addressing a session on US foreign policy at this year’s Raisina Dialogue.

 

“India should understand that we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago”. Those, he said, were to help China’s rise, which, the US realised, had become a challenge for it. “We have to be accountable to our own people.”

 

The US will focus on economic and commercial diplomacy as an objective of its foreign policy, Landau said. He added that former Democratic Party administrations had muddled US foreign policy.  

 

The dialogue is the annual international security conference organised in New Delhi by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank.

 

It is unclear when trade talks will conclude. Indian goods draw 10 per cent US tariffs (valid for 150 days after February 24) since US President Donald Trump announced new global rates of up to 15 per cent. This was after the US Supreme Court on February 20 invalidated most of his 2025 tariffs.

 

The top court said in its ruling that Trump had overstepped his presidential authority in imposing tariffs on trading partners of the US.

 

Trump has since announced the global tariffs through “other legal ways”.

 

In the same speech, Landau said he hoped India would move beyond “the Cold War model” — the tendency to keep the US at “arm’s length”. The US would like to partner India during India’s rise in this century, he added.

 

On the question of US expectations that India would stop importing oil from Russia, Landau offered the US as the country from which India could import fuel.

 

“‘America first’ does not mean ‘America alone’,” Landau said.

 

In early February, the US removed the 25 per cent punitive tariff on India for buying Russian crude oil after obtaining “a commitment” from India, according to a US statement, to stop the purchase. The Indian government has hinted at diversifying energy imports but it did not say India would stop buying Russian oil.

 

He said the two countries could collaborate in areas such as counterterrorism, freedom of navigation in the high seas, defence — something that the two countries should “lean into” — and energy.<Last year, India and the US extended an old defence cooperation agreement for 10 years. Trump has said he wanted India to buy from America defence goods worth billions of dollars. With the ongoing conflict in West Asia, India’s imports of US oil itself would be impacted, according to analysts, because ships carrying oil pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has restricted for global trade since the US and Israel started attacking it this month.