India’s chief negotiator back after ‘productive’ meet; H-1B separate from trade: US official

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is still in the US and is meeting a number of business heads to push for investments in the country.

A US official said the talks between the teams from India and US went well. The Russian oil issue, the US official said, is the thorniest issue between the two countries, and any deal between the two countries may need India to reduce its purchase of Russian oil, so that the war in Ukraine “comes to an end”.

The meeting in the US between the two teams was not a formal round of negotiations, and the approach currently is to find a single solution and not a piece-by-piece measure to resolve the existing issues, the official said. This comes amid expectations that negotiations would result in a new tariff percentage for India after the trade deal talks and resolution of the Russian oil issue.

The official said that the H-1B visa issue is not related to the trade-related difference between the two countries and that the visa issue will be dealt with separately.

“Visa is a global policy and not to target India. We are not going to mix visas and trade. Visas have to be addressed in a completely different way, as the issues are determined by the law. Substantial changes will be required in law,” the official said.

On the question of the increasing trend of investment components in the trade deal with the US, the official said: “It is a reasonable assumption that if the Indian government were to show interest in investing in the US, relations between the two countries could improve.”

Amid efforts to reach a trade deal with the US, Commerce Minister Goyal said Wednesday that India is a large importer of energy and that its energy security goals will have a “very high element” of US involvement in the years to come.

Expressing interest in small modular reactor (SMR) innovations in the US, Goyal said both countries will also continue to work together in the nuclear energy sector going forward.

India is the world’s third-largest consumer of crude oil with an import dependency of around 88 per cent. The country is also among the biggest importers of liquefied natural gas (LNG), with around half of its natural gas demand being met through imports. For the past few years, the US has been the fifth-largest supplier of crude oil to India. It has also been the second-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to India.

Goyal’s comments on energy imports come at a time when the US has imposed 25 per cent additional tariffs on India over its hefty imports of Russian oil. Sources in the Indian government have indicated that India could step up energy imports from the US to reach an agreement with Washington. The past few months have seen Indian refiners increasing oil imports from the US, which has been seen as an indication that New Delhi is willing to buy more American energy amid trade pact negotiations.