The India-US trade deal has been announced, and met with either unconditional euphoria by the government’s spokespersons, or blind condemnation by the Opposition. To my mind, both these reactions are premature and misplaced.

The reason is that both the benedictions in the deal, and the devil, lie in the details, which are not yet known. The announcement is of a framework agreement, which, as we are aware, was being negotiated for quite some time now. However, the full legal text has not been released, nor are the product-wise tariff schedules, technology agreements, and timelines known. For the moment, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has held a cursory press conference, and made a bland declaratory statement in the Lok Sabha.

In the light of such a sketchy canvas, how do we assess the deal? To my mind, there are some pros and some cons. The pluses are that the acrimonious impasse that had been created in India-US relations by Donald Trump’s aggressive and partisan tariffs has been, at least, partially broken. Under the agreement, the United States has agreed to cut its tariffs on Indian goods significantly — from punitive levels that had reached effectively 50 per cent down to around 18 per cent across many categories.

Lower US tariffs directly benefit India’s export-oriented industries. Sectors such as textiles, apparel, gems and jewellery, footwear, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, seafood (especially shrimp), and engineering goods — all of which face heavy competition........

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