US trade chief says India to maintain some agriculture protections in deal with Trump

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration is working to put the details of its trade deal with India announced on Monday on paper, but it will reduce India’s tariffs on American industrial goods to zero from 13.5% and eliminate duties but allow India to maintain some agricultural import protections, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday.

Greer told CNBC in a live interview that the US would continue to work on access to certain protected areas of India’s agriculture sector, but said India’s tariffs “for a variety of things, you know, tree nuts, wine, spirits, fruits, vegetables, etc, they’re going down to zero.”

He did not mention rice, beef, soybeans, sugar or dairy, which are commodities that India excluded from its recent trade deal with the European Union.

Greer confirmed that the deal would reduce the US tariff on most Indian goods to 18% from 50% because of the size and growth of India’s trade surplus with the US That reached $53.5 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, up from $45.8 billion for all of 2024, according to US Census Bureau data.

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Greer said that the Trump administration reached an “understanding and an agreement with the Indians as well on a variety of technical barriers to trade, areas where they have not accepted US standards. We know American goods are safe.”

He said there would be “a process for recognizing US standards” but that India would have to go through its own political processes for accepting these standards, adding that it would open up a market of more than 1 billion people to more US goods.

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Regarding India’s agreement to wind down Russian crude oil imports, he said that prior to 2022 and 2023, India did not import Russian oil and has been working since late last year to wind down imports. India was “making the right choice” to diversify its energy purchases to the US and Venezuela.

He did not specify a start date for the tariff changes, saying that the process for making it official was underway.

“We’ll finish papering it, but we know the specifics, we know the details,” Greer said. He added that India is maintaining some protection around agricultural goods.