New Delhi: MPs, India-US interim trade deal looks more like a ‘pre-committed purchase agreement’, overturning all principles of reciprocity Shashi Tharoor said on Tuesday, adding that EU ministers S Jaishankar and Piyush Goyal had avoided giving clear answers on the size, timeline or financial implications of a deal with the United States.Tharoor opened the discussion on the budget in LS, calling it “bland” and a “wasted opportunity equivalent to reinstalling airbags on a crashed car while assuring passengers that the chassis is strong and they will feel better afterwards”.On the Indian government’s claim that India had a “better deal” with the US than other Asian economies, he said the claim did not stand up to scrutiny. “It looks less like a free trade agreement and more like a pre-committed purchase that subverts the idea of reciprocity,” he asked.He said that while India may have received a tariff cut of 1-2 percentage points, no East Asian economy agreed to deliberately erode its trade surplus with the United States through guaranteed purchase obligations.Addressing the government, Tharoor said it was not governance but overall management where “promises are loud, budgets are ambitious but delivery is conspicuously missing”. neural network
