US deal against country’s honour: Congress

The Congress said on Sunday that the Indo-US interim trade deal is against India’s honour and sovereignty, alleging that the Government executed it under pressure from America.

Addressing a press conference, party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the Government showed what she termed “unusual and suspicious haste” in finalising the agreement.

“This trade agreement is against national interest, farmers, youth, energy security and data sovereignty, and is a compromised deal imposed on the country by the prime minister,” she claimed.

The Congress has said India would have been in a much stronger position had the government waited for the US Supreme Court’s verdict, striking down President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and not acted in haste.

A uniform global tariff would have applied to India, but under the India-US agreement announced in early February, an 18 per cent tariff on Indian products was accepted, she said.

“That is, even when tariffs rose from three per cent to 18 per cent, the government was celebrating it as an achievement. This is not a celebration but an attempt to mislead the country,” she said.

Shrinate claimed that under the agreement, India promised near-zero tariffs on US products, agreed to import goods worth nearly $500 billion from the US over five years, and accepted conditions such as stopping the purchase of cheaper crude oil from Russia.

She questioned why Indian farmers are being “pushed towards ruin” by opening domestic markets to US agricultural products. The agreement amounts to a direct attack on India’s energy security and data security, she said.

“By promising not to buy cheap crude oil from Russia, a conspiracy has been hatched to make India dependent on expensive imports, which will increase the burden of inflation on the common people. At the same time, conditions related to handing over sensitive data to the US pose a serious threat to India’s digital sovereignty,” she claimed.