Can Bilaterally Work With Nations With Fair Trade Practices: Piyush Goyal In his address, the minister emphasized that Indian industries must focus on 'nationalism' and strive to turn the current challenges into opportunities.
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Union Commerce and Industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday at the India Global Forum event that India can "bilaterally work with nations that have fair trade practices".
"India has 'a lot of elbow room' in bilaterally working with developed countries and those that follow fair trade practices and offer equal opportunity to do business," said Goyal
In his address, the minister emphasized that Indian industries must focus on 'nationalism' and strive to turn the current challenges into opportunities.
"The Indian industry is very competitive. They can beat any competition in the world if everyone sticks to the rules of the game," Goyal said at an industry event.
The minister took a dig at China by stating that China's growth was spurred by unfair trade practices. He said the growth was founded on "every action, which, in the rules of the game, would be considered improper.
He said, "These are challenging times and a reflection of a world in turmoil—one that has, over the past several decades, evolved to reach this stage. And if you ask me when it all began, it was when China was admitted into the WTO."
"When I talk about labour practices in certain countries, there's an effort to demolish industries one after the other. Often, the message gets lost in the desire to have low-cost goods serve business, consumers with a very short-term perspective. The current state of play in some way is a culmination of almost three decades of this attack on several economies," said Goyal.
He stressed the need for fair play in global trade and for goods and services to be priced "at an honest value." Goyal warned that without this balance, "the world will face even greater turbulence."
He added that India is well-positioned to navigate current market fluctuations and transform them into opportunities. "Like we did during Covid-19 and turned challenges into opportunities and the late 1990s, when the Indian IT sector capitalised on the Y2K bug crisis to emerge on the world stage," he said.
Goyal's statement came in the background of US President Donald Trump's announcement of a 26 per cent reciprocal tariff on Indian exports to the US. The decision brought chaos to the market as the effect of the tariff began to take form in all 180 countries where trade restrictions were imposed.
In response to the reciprocal tariff, India's stock market witnessed a sharp decline yesterday, dragging equity indices to a 10-month low and wiping out over INR 19 lakh crore in investor wealth within seconds of the market opening.
On April 8 though, the market stabilised, with the Nifty 50 index opening at 22,446 and marking a lead of 2.35%. Similarly, the BSE Sensex opened at 74,013 and surged to an intraday high of 74,846, gaining over 2.25%.
India is said to be in talks with the US over the tariffs and considers it an advantage to be one of the first nations to have started talks over the trade deal with Washington.
Meanwhile, China has responded by that it will "fight to the end" if the US continues to escalate the trade war, after US President Donald Trump threatened huge additional tariffs in response to China's retaliatory measures.
X Link: https://x.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1909299111628517582
