New Delhi : India has secured a major trade advantage over its competitors, with Union Minister Piyush Goyal asserting that the trade deal with the US protected Indian farmers and MSMEs, while at the same time, it opened the US market to several agricultural products. Addressing a press conference on Saturday, hours after the interim trade framework was announced,
No GM items will enter India, no relief on meat, poultry, dairy, soybean, maize, rice, wheat, sugar, millets, fruits such as bananas, strawberries, cherries, citrus fruit, greenpea, kabuli chana, moong, oilseeds, ethanol, tobacco.” India and the U.S. on Saturday (February 7, 2026) issued a joint statement announcing that they have reached a framework for an interim trade agreement under which tariffs on New Delhi will be reduced to 18%.
“All those products on which we are ‘aatma nirbhar’ have been kept out of the agreement,” Goyal said, claiming that the agreement, a year in the making, would open a $30 trillion market for Indian exporters. The final trade deal, whose negotiations soured India-US ties, is expected to be signed in mid-March.
Dishing out details on the trade terms reached with the Trump administration, Goyal said several agricultural products would now attract zero reciprocal tariff in the US. “In agriculture, many products from India will now be exported to the US at zero duty,” Goyal said, asserting that today would be “etched in golden letters”. Tea, spices, coffee, and coconut oil will now face no tariffs in the US.
Moreover, Goyal said a wide range of fruits, vegetables and farm produce, including banana, mango, guava, avocado, kiwi, papaya, pineapple, mushrooms, cereals, barley, bakery products, cocoa products, and sesame seeds, would also enter the US market without duties.
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