00:00hello and a very good evening this is our special broadcast i'm geeta mohan and joining me
00:05in this show is maria shakil we are going to talk about the biggest interview uh when it comes to
00:12india u.s ties secretary of state marco rubio was in india and an exclusive conversation with not
00:20just marco rubio but also with the ambassador of us to india sergey gore it was done by our group
00:27editor publishing raj chengappa and that's what we're going to discuss this evening from trade and
00:33tariffs to oil terror and global partnerships the high stakes conversation covered it all over the
00:40next one hour geeta and i will be decoding the big takeaways from this exclusive conversation with
00:46our experts will be joining me on the show first up marco rubio confirmed that the india u.s trade
00:53agreement is very close with only a few issues left to negotiate he insisted that the final deal
01:00must benefit both the countries absolutely and we will be listening into what he to say when it comes
01:07to the nuances but the fact is that there are a lot of areas that require ironing out and will
01:13that
01:14happen before prime minister narendra modi maria goes for the g20 in the united states of america or for
01:20that matter during the east asia and the asean summit in manila president trump had said that
01:27india and the u.s are pretty close to sign an agreement and it would be different what i'd like
01:33to know is washington willing to give india the competitive tariff advantage it is seeking for
01:38this interim trade agreement well i'm not going to get into the specifics of any agreement until they're
01:42done because there's still a number of items being negotiated although very few so we're very close and
01:47i anticipate i can't i can't foresee anything that will keep us from reaching agreement but there's
01:51still some items that are being discussed so i'd prefer not to like go into the details of it until
01:56it's all fully worked out suffice it to say that once this deal is done it has to be one
01:59that's
01:59beneficial to both countries and and that's what i anticipate it will be and i think the concern is
02:05that uh india expects continuity rather than unpredictability and there is a super 301 provision
02:12hovering around so could we expect that there'll be continuity and not you know continuously have to
02:18revise our tariffs well that's the point the point of having uh an agreement is to be able to have
02:22certainty so that people know they can invest people know what the rules are that are going to govern
02:26train and commerce between the two countries that's the very purpose of having a deal and um so that's
02:32what we're working towards and i feel very optimistic that we're going to get to a very good place very
02:35soon
02:36excellent and ambassador turning to you uh when it comes to the investment relationship uh where do
02:43you see the next big wave of american investment coming into india in which sectors you think that
02:47look our our bilateral trade is at an all-time high um our bilateral trade 15 years ago used to
02:54be 20
02:54billion today it's 240 billion dollars and it goes it goes both ways you have incredible investment
02:58coming into the united states the president recently hosted sr and oval office they're opening incredible
03:03facilities multi-billion dollar facilities in the united states that are creating jobs in local
03:08communities for americans on the other hand this is a win-win situation we have american companies that
03:13have moved here especially relating to i.t now when they move here that complements a job back home
03:19also this is not a one-way street and so our goal is to keep increasing that bilateral trade
03:25and identify those win-win situations
