00:00On trade, we had a very open discussion and the result of that discussion was that the
00:09Prime Minister and the President agreed that we would conclude, you rightly said, not a
00:16free trade agreement but a bilateral trade agreement.
00:19And at the end of the day, finally, forgive my saying it, presented us with a take it
00:24or leave it situation and we left it.
00:27There's a very active and intense trade discussion going on.
00:32On trade, we had a very open discussion and the result of that discussion was that the
00:41Prime Minister and the President agreed that we would conclude, you rightly said, not a
00:48free trade agreement but a bilateral trade agreement by fall this year.
00:54And that is what is currently under discussion.
00:59We have a team here.
01:00By the way, it's not that they are kicking off the discussion.
01:04My colleague, the Trade Minister, the Commerce Minister was in the U.S. last month.
01:11And since then, actually, we've been working the trade account through virtual means.
01:17So there's a very active and intense trade discussion going on at this point of time.
01:25This brings me to the trade part of what you asked.
01:28Look, we did not sign RCEP for this reason.
01:34We through the RCEP discussions, we continuously sought protections and safeguards because
01:42we had apprehensions about a surge of imports, essentially spurred by non-market and subsidy
01:52support.
01:53We didn't get it.
01:55The RCEP partners did not take our concerns seriously.
01:59And at the end of the day, finally, forgive my saying it, presented us with a take it
02:04or leave it situation and we left it.
02:09And I think today, if you ask people, at that time when we did it, perhaps opinions
02:14were a bit more divided.
02:15Today, I think there's a much stronger consensus that not joining RCEP for a country like India
02:23was a wise decision because, see, the nature of RCEP, RCEP is a supply chain architecture
02:30system, where rules of origin have very limited meaning.
02:35I mean, they can't be verified in the way in which it used to be before.
02:39So the way the flows would come at us, I mean, already we are today struggling with some
02:46very serious adverse trade balances.
02:49There are deep concerns in this country about the hollowing out of our industrial capacity.
02:54We believe that we are getting, again, a lot of unfair competition out of economies east
03:00of India.
03:02So for sake of diplomacy, I will not take names.
03:07And I think all these were factors into our thinking.
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