As US negotiator arrives for trade talks, Trump's advisor Navarro says India 'coming to table'

New York, Sep 16 (IANS) As US Assistant Trade Representative Brendan Lynch was in New Delhi for talks, President Donald Trump’s Senior Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, who has been harshly against India, has said that it is “coming to the table” to negotiate a trade deal.

But he indicated that India’s oil purchases from Russia was hanging over trade relations between the two countries.

Speaking on the CNBC programme Squawk Box on Monday, he said, “India is coming to the table”.

Lynch's visit comes as expectations of a trade deal have been boosted by positive messages by Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after days of bitter stalemate.

Navarro said, “Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi, sent out a very conciliatory, nice, constructive tweet, whatever they do in India, and President Trump responded to that”.

But he appears to have gotten the sequence mixed up.

Trump said on a Truth Social post on September 9, that talks were continuing and “I feel certain that there will be no difficulty in coming to a successful conclusion for both of our Great Countries”.

Calling PM Modi a “great friend”, he said he would be talking to him.

PM responded to Trump’s post about 17 hours later, “I am confident that our trade negotiations will pave the way for unlocking the limitless potential of the India-US partnership”.

He added that he was looking forward to talking with Trump.

Navarro repeated his complaints about New Delhi having the highest tariffs, while his interviewer joked about Navarro’s earlier comment about India being the “Maharaja of tariffs”.

“They have the highest tariffs of any major country. They have very high non-tariff barriers”, he asserted. “We had to deal with that like we're dealing with every other country that does that”.

“And by the way, there's this issue of India buying Russian oil, which they never did” before the Ukraine conflict, he claimed.

“Indian refiners got in bed with the Russian refiners immediately after the invasion, and they're making that like bandits”, he said.

India buying oil from Russia, he claimed, had an ultimate cost to US taxpayers because when Moscow uses revenue from India to buy weapons, the US has to pay for arming Ukraine.

Navarro said that he thought PM Modi felt uncomfortable when he appeared with China’s President Xi Jinping in Tianjin last month.

"Watching Modi on the stage with China, which has been its long time existential threat, and Putin, that was an interesting stretch. I don't think he felt comfortable”, he said.

US nominee to be ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, told a Senate panel considering his nomination last week that India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal was expected in Washington this week, and he will meet with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

However, Brendan Lynch was to be in New Delhi for talks with India’s chief negotiator Rajesh Goyal.

Lynch is a former director for India in the US Trade Repreentative’s office.

After imposing a 25 per cent reciprocal tariff on India, adding a 25 per cent punitive tariff for buying Russian oil, and showering criticism, including calling its economy “dead”, Trump suddenly turned around with conciliatory statement.

He admitted to a Fox News interviewer last week that the tariff “causes a rift with India” and imposing it was “not an easy thing to do.”

Earlier he appeared to say ruefully that the US has “lost” India.

Even as Trump was making overtures to India, Navarro, who is fixated on trade and Russian oil was hurling insults against India.

--IANS

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