Why the India-US trade deal didn’t happen: Lutnick points to missed Modi-Trump call

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the trade deal with India did not materialise because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not call US President Donald Trump within a set timeframe.

Speaking on the All-In Podcast on Thursday, Lutnick explained how negotiations with India failed to conclude despite discussions being underway.

“I’ll tell you a story about India. I did the first deal with the UK, and we told the UK that they had to get it done by two Fridays from now. That the train was going to leave the station by two Fridays, because I have a lot of other countries doing things, and you know, if someone else is first, they’re first. President Trump does deals like a staircase,” Lutnick said.

“(The) first stair gets the best deal. You can’t get the best deal after the first guy,” he said.

Lutnick said Trump works that way “because that way it incents you to come to the table”.

He recalled that after the UK deal, Trump was asked which country would be next. While the president mentioned several countries, “he names India a couple of times publicly”.

“And we were talking (with) India, and we told India, ‘you have three Fridays’. Well, they have to get it done,” he said.

Lutnick said that while he negotiated the contracts and set up the structure of the agreements, the final step rested with Trump. “But let’s be clear, it’s his (Trump) deal. He is the closer. He does the deal. So I said ‘You got to have Modi, it’s all set up, you have to have Modi call the President’. They (India) were uncomfortable doing it, so Modi didn’t call.”

After that deadline passed, Lutnick said the US announced trade deals with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

He added that Washington had assumed India’s deal would be concluded before those countries. “I have negotiated them at a higher rate. So now the problem is the deals came out at a higher rate. And then India calls back and says, ‘Oh, okay, we are ready’. I said, ‘ready for what, it was like three weeks later’,” he said.

“I go, ‘Are you ready for the train that left the station three weeks ago?’ So what happened is they just…there’s sometimes there’s that seesaw, and people are just on the wrong side of the seesaw,” he said.

“So what happened is India just was on the wrong side of the seesaw, and it was just they couldn’t get it done,” Lutnick added, using hand gestures to imitate a seesaw.

“And so what happened is all these other countries kept doing deals, and they’re (India) just further in the back of the line,” he said.

Lutnick said he wanted the India trade deal to be completed “in between the UK and Vietnam because that’s what I negotiate”.

“And they remember, and I remember, and they say, ‘but you agreed’. And I said, ‘then, not now, then’. So that’s the problem. India will work it out, but there’s a lot of countries and they each have their own deep internal politics, and to get something approved by their parliament… these are deeply complex things,” he added.

Lutnick’s comments come days after Trump said Modi was aware of his displeasure over India’s purchases of Russian oil, adding that Washington could raise tariffs on New Delhi “very quickly”.

The remarks came at a time when India and the US were negotiating a bilateral trade agreement. So far, six rounds of negotiations have been held. The proposed pact includes a framework to address the 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods entering the US.

(With inputs from agencies)