United Nations: A US trade deal with tariffs on labour-intensive Indian products at a lower rate than some of the competitors would be a \u201cbig advantage\u201d and present an opportunity, according to NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery.<\/p>\n
Asked during an exclusive interview with IANS about the possible effects of the tariff turmoil, he said, \u201cThere\u2019s an opportunity there. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a question of negotiation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we could have, if you like, low-duty access for some of our labour-intensive products to the US market, while some of our competitors don\u2019t enjoy quite that, that could be a big opportunity for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt swings in roundabout, we\u2019ll have to give up something, but if we were to get that (lower tariff), that would be really quite important for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Negotiators from India and the US are racing to forge a trade deal before US President Donald Trump\u2019s August 1 deadline.<\/p>\n
Bery was at the UN for the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development that concluded on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
It brought together Ministers and senior development officials from several countries to take stock of the progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals set for 2030.<\/p>\n
Overall, though, Bery said, \u201cThe Indian growth model has been, you know, less trade intensive than many of our peers in Asia in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n
Therefore, the tariffs would have less of an impact on India\u2019s economy compared to other Asian countries more reliant on exports.<\/p>\n
Under Trump\u2019s trade deals with countries with a labour-intensive export profile broadly comparable to India\u2019s potential in some areas, the tariff will be 20 per cent for Vietnam, and 19 per cent for the Philippines and Indonesia.<\/p>\n
For some of the countries that have not reached an agreement with the US, Trump has announced tariffs of 35 per cent for Bangladesh, 36 per cent for Thailand, and 25 per cent for Malaysia if there\u2019s no deal before August 1.<\/p>\n
An economist, Bery has experience of international financial institutions with nearly 30 years at the World Bank, and multinationals as the chief economist of Royal Dutch Shell, giving him unique insight into the policy intersections of trade, investment, globalisation and development.<\/p>\n
Asked if there was a need for greater inflow of capital for growth, he said, \u201cI think capital is less important than linkages and technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Explaining it, he said, \u201cWe, NITI Aayog, helped design a programme called production-linked incentives (PLI), which included the mobile phone sector and succeeded in attracting Apple to make iPhones in India.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like much more of that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to NITI Aayog, PLI \u201cseeks to bring size and scale to India\u2019s manufacturing capabilities and exports in key sectors, while creating and nurturing global champions\u201d by incentivising \u201cenhanced production for a limited number of eligible anchor entities, in the key sectors, within a limited timeframe\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bery said that he met privately with some business leaders \u201cto get a sense of what needs fixing, what some of the hesitations are, and there\u2019s no one \u2018Big Thing’\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of interest in India, but there\u2019s a sense that India makes things harder than it needs to at particularly the state level,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u2013IANS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United Nations: A US trade deal with tariffs on labour-intensive Indian products at a lower rate than some of the competitors would be a \u201cbig advantage\u201d and present an opportunity, according to NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery. Asked during an exclusive interview with IANS about the possible effects of the tariff turmoil, he said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-53582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/202507243460702.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53584,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53582\/revisions\/53584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}