India

The U.S. government has complained about a slew of enacted and proposed Indian tariff hikes targeting technological and medical goods during a series of three World Trade Organization meetings over the past week, saying it appears as if India is pursuing “an import substitution program.”

Additional members of the World Trade Organization this week joined the U.S., EU and Japan in separate committee meetings to press India to explain why tariffs on a number of products allegedly covered under the plurilateral 1996 Information Technology Agreement were not in violation of its commitments under that trade deal.

The United States is continuing to complain about what it sees as India's lax intellectual property policies and burdensome package labeling requirements, although the U.S. government's latest annual report on global trade barriers found modest improvements by India in both fields during 2015.

The U.S., Japan and European Union are pressing India at the World Trade Organization to explain tariffs on four products that they believe violate India's obligations under the original WTO Plurilateral Information Technology Agreement.

A bipartisan group of House Ways & Means Committee members has asked U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to involve the private sector more in two bilateral forums aimed at removing trade irritants and promote cooperation.