00:00The EU's Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa are in New Delhi to mark a historic...
00:05...free trade deal, which Prime Minister Modi has held as a significant agreement.
00:10Greenberg Chief Europe Correspondent Oliver Crook is back for more.
00:14Oli, why did...
00:15...these negotiations take so long and is the fact that they're seemingly now over the line...
00:20...likely to provoke the wrath of President Trump?
00:25Yeah, let's connect those two ideas. I think the question may not be why it took so long, but why did it happen now and why did it...
00:30...to happen only a couple of weeks after that Mercosur trade deal between the European Union and Lat...
00:35...in America? And the answer is that after 12 months of Donald Trump and 12 months of a sort of tariff rollercoaster...
00:40...a rollercoaster that does not appear to be ending, whether you look at what's coming to South Korea...
00:45...overnight, or you're looking at the sort of disagreements last week on Greenland and tariffs, basically the Europeans...
00:50...and India. India is still facing a 50% tariff from the United States. The Europeans have put their...
00:55...trade deal with the United States on ice after the sort of spat on Greenland last week. They need to find the...
01:00...bigger markets. They need to find stability across the world. And that is the ambition of this trade deal.
01:05As you say, Lizzie, it's been 20 years in the making. It will include more than 20%.
01:10...of the world population, more than 20% of the world GDP. And the hope here is to try...
01:15...to get access to the Indian market by European companies, namely on things like machinery...
01:20...obviously they'd like to sell cars there. India has had very, very high tariffs on cars and automobiles.
01:25The Indians would like to sell textiles, minerals, and other things into the European Union. This is not quite...
01:30...as expansive and as free a trade agreement as you see with Mercosur, but it's certainly a significant...
01:35...to step forward and an important signal for the European Union trying to diversify away...
01:39...A, from the United States...
01:40...but B, also from China. There's also a security and defense pact that the Europeans are signing...
01:45...with the Indians, which will also serve their geopolitical interests because right now India buys a lot of its military...
01:50...kit from the Russians. They'd like to see some of that being bought from the Europeans. We had some...
01:55...reporting out a couple of weeks ago that the Indians were looking to buy, for example, a German submarine.
02:00But when we think about the impact of this potential trade deal and what it could have on the European Union, we have the number...
02:05...members here from Allianz giving a couple of the flavor of that. It could increase the sort of exports...
02:10...from the EU to India to the tune of about $20 billion. It could boost European...
02:15...GDP annually by about 10 basis points. But key here, Lizzy, is it could offset nearly a...
02:20...quarter of US-related export losses from higher US tariffs from the European Union to the United States. So...
02:25...this all part of that effort to try to diversify away from the United States in this moment here of what we...
02:30...can say is more European pragmatism and indeed more Indian pragmatism.
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