Urging India to rethink its trade barriers, tariffs and regulations to become a hub for innovation and production, US Ambassador Kenneth Juster emphasised on the need for India and the US to see trade relations as an important strategic element of their ties. He particularly emphasised on the barriers in the technology industry, including a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) order telling technology companies to base all their servers in India. Juster warned that the issue that had become one of a growing number of economic differences between New Delhi and Washington over the past few months.

India agreed this month to defer its plan to hit the US with retaliatory tariffs worth $ 235 million on 29 American products till late September. This was in response to the U.S. raising tariffs on steel by 25 per cent and aluminum products by 10 per cent, which India has failed to get a waiver on. The US is also pondering over the issue of cancelling India’s Generalised Systems of Preferences (GSP) status over the tariffs issue.