Secretive Trump Talks With India Spur Fears of 'More of the Same Corporate-Dominated Trade Deals'

Vague comments from top Trump administration officials this week signaling progress toward a bilateral trade deal with India and reports of close corporate involvement in the talks have fueled concerns that the White House is poised to uphold the status quo of business-friendly, anti-worker trade agreements, despite the U.S. president's stated desire for sweeping change.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement Monday that the Trump administration and India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry have agreed on "a roadmap for the negotiations on reciprocal trade." Greer did not offer specifics on what a U.S.-India trade deal would entail.

Nor did U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who said Tuesday that talks between the Trump administration and the government of far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have yielded "very good progress."

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has claimed similar progress in trade talks with other countries, has threatened to hit India with a 26% tariff on top of an across-the-board 10% duty that the president imposed on all imports to the U.S. earlier this month. Some U.S. companies have begun laying off workers, citing uncertainty caused by Trump's erratic tariff policies.

"Without transparency and public and congressional participation in the content of these trade negotiations, it is virtually certain that these 'deals' will be nothing more than another authoritarian power grab."

Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen, warned Tuesday that "Trump continues to con American workers, claiming that he's upending our unfair trading system, while actually doubling down on secretive and rushed 'negotiations' that will only lead to more of the same corporate-dominated trade deals at the expense of working people."

Trump claimed last week that he could begin to wrap up trade negotiations with China and other nations "over the next three or four weeks," but critics like St. Louis said there's plenty of reason to worry about the final outcomes.

"He's not using trade and tariff policy to protect workers—he's wielding reckless and unstrategic tariff threats as a cudgel to push more antidemocratic deals that benefit his corporate cronies," she said. "Look no further than Big Tech's hit list of other countries' privacy, anti-monopoly, and online safety laws that he waved around when he announced so-called 'reciprocal tariffs.'"

"Without transparency and public and congressional participation in the content of these trade negotiations," St. Louis added, "it is virtually certain that these 'deals' will be nothing more than another authoritarian power grab, as other countries and corporations bend the knee to Trump, benefiting billionaires at the expense of the rest of us."

The Financial Times reported Monday that the Trump administration plans to pressure India, one of the United States' biggest trading partners, to "give online retailers such as Amazon and Walmart full access to its $125 billion e-commerce market" as part of any bilateral trade deal.

Both Amazon and Walmart donated to Trump's inaugural fund, and FT reported that the latter company's CEO "brought up the issue of India's barriers against foreign e-commerce companies" during a meeting with the U.S. president at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year.

"Two industry executives told The Financial Times that the Trump administration was coordinating closely with U.S. e-commerce platforms as part of the negotiations," the newspaper added.