White House expects trade deals with India, UK within 2-3 weeks: Report

The White House is expecting to reach trade deals with India, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom within the next three weeks, according to a report.

A host of countries have been in talks with the Donald Trump administration to reach bilateral trade deals to avoid the worst outcome of tariffs. The 90-day pause on ‘reciprocal tariffs’ is essentially a window for these countries to reach deals before tariffs are reinstated for good.

The Daily Telegraph has reported that the White House expects deals with India, Japan, and South Korea to be reached in the first batch of deals and then, in the second batch, it expects to reach a deal with the UK.

As for the US-UK trade deal, which is expected after deals with India, Japan, and South Korea, a White House official told The Telegraph it is expected “soon” within “two weeks or maybe three”.

As the White House expects the deal with India to be reached before the UK, the timeline would be even shorter for the India-US trade deal.

Together, these trade deals would lay the groundwork to isolate China, which has faced tariffs extendable to up to 245 per cent in some cases, according to the newspaper.

While China has responded with counter-tariffs and non-tariff escalatory measures, such as halting the export of critical and rare earths, countries like India have responded quietly with negotiations for a bilateral deal. To be sure, India had been in talks with the Trump administration for a bilateral trade deal even before the tariffs were announced. This is why the Indian government maintains that India did not deserve tariffs in the first place.

In the so-called reciprocal tariffs rollout this month, Trump clubbed India among the highest-tariffed countries. He slapped 26 per cent tariffs on India and clubbed the country with Vietnam (46 per cent), Taiwan (32 per cent), South Korea (26 per cent), and Japan (24 per cent). He imposed the baseline 10 per cent tariffs on the UK.

Earlier this month, Union Commerce Minister told Firstpost’s Palki Sharma in an interview: “India was not one of those countries which really needed to have tariffs on them because we were already in engagement for a bilateral trade deal.”

However, Goyal gave a much longer timeline for the finalisation of the trade deal. He said the deal should be finalised by fall.