India and the United States have a “very complicated” relationship, said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday as President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian exports kicked in. Stating that Trump and PM Narendra Modi share a very good relationship, Bessent stressed that the tariffs were not imposed only because of Russian crude, but also due to the slow trade deal between the two democracies.
In an interview with Fox Business, Bessent said the US expected to have a trade deal in the picture with India to be among the first ones, which didn’t happen.
“The Indians came in very early after Liberation Day to start negotiating on tariffs, and we still don’t have a deal,” he said, referring to April 2, 2025, when President Trump had announced the rates of reciprocal tariffs for the first time.
A deal expected by May-June didn’t happen: Bessent
Elaborating on the reasons behind the extreme tariffs on India, the highest after Brazil, the US Treasury Secretary said that he had thought that “we would have a deal” with India in May and June.
“I thought India could be one of the earlier deals. And they kind of tapped us along in terms of the negotiations. And then there is also the aspect of the Russian crude purchases, which they’ve been profiteering on. So there are many levels going on here,” he added, reported PTI.
‘We will come together’
Taking a softer stance on the India-US ties, Bessent said the two countries would come together “at the end of the day”. ” “I think at the end of the day, we will come together.” “I think a lot of it by the Indians has been performative but….I’ve said this all along during the tariff negotiations, the US is the deficit country,” he said in the interview.
Explaining a “schism” in trade relations, he said that the surplus country should worry. “So the Indians are selling to us, they have very high tariffs, and we have a very large deficit with them,” he added.