Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said that India and US are seeking bilateral solutions to the several longstanding World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes between the two countries.

Goyal made these comments after the conclusion of the 13th India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF) with his US counterpart United States Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai in Washington.

Touching upon the WTO disputes, Goyal said, "These outstanding disputes are areas where both countries have had some wins and some losses. And we have directed our officials to engage very aggressively and over the next two or three months to see if we can find a bilateral settlement of some of these WTO disputes demonstrating the trust and friendship between the two countries,"

"Since both countries relaunched the Trade Policy Forum in a new form with renewed vigour in November 2021, India-US have seen this becoming a very robust and outcome-oriented discussion on several issues of mutual interest," Goyal said.

At the TPF meeting, Katherine Tai emphasized that the TPF is contributing directly to the strength of US-India bilateral relations by providing a structure for constructive dialogue on trade policy matters.

She noted the tremendous potential for "growth between our economies", and the equally significant potential to ensure that bilateral trade brings a positive impact to working people in both countries.

Tai also highlighted the commitment of both President Biden and herself to ensure that bilateral trade dialogue contributes directly to helping the United States and India respond to shared challenges in the global economy.

At the TPF, India and US discussed the inordinate delays in the issuance of business visas to the people from India, and there has been a good resonance of it by the Americans, Goyal said.

“We found very good resonance to our request that issuance of business visas which is taking a long time back home in India is an area which needs to be expedited so that business persons interested on both sides — the US businesses and Indian businesses — need to have faster processing of business reasons so that trade and investment and business does not suffer,” Goyal added.

Goyal further spoke about India and the United States developing a mechanism for Indian fishermen to be able to export shrimp for American consumers.

“We had discussions for restarting the wild-caught shrimp exports from India to the US,” Goyal told reporters.

This was an area that was banned by the US because of concerns around turtles, in the areas where wild caught shrimp was being fished in India, he said.

“A turtle excluder device has been designed with the technical support of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), from the US, and that design has been accepted now, between the two countries as a collaborative effort between India and the United States,” he said.

The device is now being taken up for trials. The trials of that machine, he said, will ensure that the turtle excluder device will minimize the impact of fishing on the sea turtle population.

“We hope that these trials in India will complete in the coming few months, so that wild-caught shrimp can once again be exported from India to the US. It was a product of good acceptance in the US market, good taste, and has good potential for trade between the two countries,” Goyal said.

Image courtesy: Twitter/@PiyushGoyal