AFTI statement on India GSP revocation

June 1 , 2019 – Brian Pomper, Executive Director, Alliance for Fair Trade with India, on US decision to revoke India’s GSP status effective June 5, 2019:

Yesterday’s decision is an unfortunate reflection of both the seriousness of our outstanding trade issues with India and the lost opportunity to address them.

 The U.S. and India took more than a year to discuss a handful of discrete but painful market access barriers AFTI members face in India, but over these many months of talks India repeatedly failed to deliver. India needs to engage urgently and seriously to eliminate barriers and improve our bilateral trade relations.

We want both sides to find constructive ways to promote trade in innovative products and services. American companies in India face barriers that target many of America’s most competitive industries through price controls, weak intellectual property regime, costly testing requirements, and soon new royalty caps. These actions harm both American businesses and Indian enterprises. We urge India to address these concerns seriously, robustly and quickly as a necessary step to put our long underperforming trade relationship on the right track.