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What’s at Stake for Indian Agriculture in Trump’s Trade Deal?

Anuj Srivas

Indian farmers have expressed concern that New Delhi has made too many concessions to Washington after the two countries brokered a new trade deal that would lower tariffs.

Under the terms of the deal that was laid out in a joint statement from both countries released on Saturday, India will “eliminate or reduce tariffs on all U.S. industrial goods” and other food and agricultural products.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will apply a reciprocal tariff rate of 18% on goods from India, including textiles and apparel, leather and footwear, plastic and rubber, organic chemicals, and certain machinery, the joint statement added.

The terms were released after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with India, stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to halt Russian oil purchases.

Modi lauded the new trade deal in a post on social media platform X later on Saturday, saying it would open up opportunities and generate jobs.

But Indian farmer unions weren’t convinced, calling the deal a “total surrender” to American agricultural giants.

“Indian industry, agriculture … are now under grave threat of cheap imports that will be dumped into Indian markets,” the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a coalition of multiple farmers’ unions, said in a statement following the announcement.

The group also called on farmers to join a nationwide protest on Thursday.

What’s on the table?

The joint statement states that India will “eliminate or reduce” tariffs on a “wide range of U.S. food and agricultural products.”

This includes tree nuts, some fresh fruit, soybean oil, wine, spirits and other “additional products” that were not specified.

Siraj Hussain, a former agriculture ministry top official, said Indian consumers were purchasing more nuts, “so it’s import may not have much impact on local production,” and will help satisfy high demand.

Domestic growers do worry, however, about cheap imports on items such as apples, which they believe could have dire impacts on local producers.

“Import of fresh fruits such as apples … will ruin the farmers,” SKM said. Officials hope safeguards included into the agreement — such as import quotas or minimum import prices for commodities including apples — will reduce the impact of foreign competition.

New Delhi’s promise of lower duties on dried distillers’ grains and red sorghum for animal feed could also reduce the need for local soybean meal.

Opposition lawmaker Jairam Ramesh said the move to ease imports of dried distillers’ grains and soybean oil would hurt “millions of soybean farmers” in key Indian states such as Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

What’s off the table?

To stem concerns, India’s trade minister, Piyush Goyal, reassured farmers that their interests would be safeguarded, adding that the key red lines that had been drawn by New Delhi had not been crossed.

He said “no concessions” had been extended in “sensitive areas” such as grains, spices, dairy, poultry, meat and several vegetables and fruits — including potatoes, oranges and strawberries.

The trade minister also said genetically modified crops were not part of the agreement.

This includes GM soybean, which the U.S. has searched hard to find new markets for.

Small farms ‘can’t compete’

While the farm sector contributes just 16% to India’s gross domestic product, it provides livelihood to over 45% of the population.

This makes the industry a key voting bloc often wooed by political parties. Farmer groups have also shown, on multiple occasions, that they are a street force to be reckoned with.

In 2021, the government abandoned plans to reform the sector after months of intense protests that blocked the national capital’s highways and led to Delhi’s historic Red Fort complex being stormed by tractors.

“Indian farms are very small and they can’t really compete with highly subsidized U.S. agriculture,” Hussain, the former agriculture ministry official, said.

India and U.S. trade

In January-November 2025, when New Delhi was negotiating with Washington, Indian imports of American agricultural goods rose 34% year on year, raking in just under $2.9 billion.

Top imports included cotton, soybean oil, ethanol and various nuts such as almonds. This happened even before the trade deal, although the rise is partly due to India reducing tariffs on some of these U.S. items.

Experts have said that a further reduction on duties for products such as soybean oil, which was announced in the joint statement, will likely lead to a jump in goods being imported by India from the U.S.

[Courtesy: The Japan Times, Japan’s largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper.]

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US Trade Deal Will Destroy Farmers by Flooding India with American Farm Produce: SKM

Newsclick Report

Expressing outrage over US President Donald Trump’s announcement on social media on a US-India trade deal on the Narendra Modi government allowing 0% import tariff on US goods, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a farmers’ collective accused the Centre of “surrendering to the pressure of US Imperialism.”

In a press statement, SKM said this move will destroy the already struggling farm sector, ruin rural livelihoods by flooding the Indian markets with American farm produce.

The SKM also announced village-level campaigns against the trade deal from February 4-11, where the effigies of Modi and Trump would be burnt.

“While US president Donald Trump is protecting the rural economy of America, it is shameful that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is succumbing to break the backbone of the rural economy of India,” the SKM statement read.

Read the full statement below.

SKM Denounces Modi Govt.’s Total Surrender Before Imperialism

US trade deal will destroy Indian farmers by flooding the market with US agricultural produce

• Crops to be immediately hit are soybean, maize, cotton, and dairy; livelihood of crores of farmers will be jeopardised
• Calls for campaign in villages from 4th to 11th February, burn effigies of Modi and Trump in mass meetings
• Support General Strike on 12 February with mass protest actions

SKM strongly condemns the betrayal of the people, especially farmers by the Modi Government allowing zero per cent import tariff of US goods surrendering to the pressure of US Imperialism.

SKM recalls the declaration of the Prime Minister Modi on 15th August 2025 at the rampart of Red Fort that “he is personally ready to pay heavy price to protect the interests of the farmers” and now shamelessly bowing down to the dictates of the US President Donald Trump for zero import tax to allow free flow of US agricultural produces into Indian market. Farmers will never forgive Modi for this “historic betrayal”.

This trade deal to allow Indian markets to be flooded by highly subsidized US agricultural products will devastate crores of small and middle farmers’ households in India. The US has only 18.8 lakh farmers as per the recent survey in 2024 compared to 14.65 crore operational holdings in India as per the agricultural census of 2015. 48 % of the work force and 65% of the population in India depends on agriculture and allied sectors.

According to US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, under the deal, the US will “export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices, and pumping cash into rural America”, helping reduce the US’s 1.3 billion dollar agricultural trade deficit with India.  While US president Donald Trump is protecting the rural economy of America, it is shameful that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is succumbing to break the backbone of the rural economy of India.

SKM calls for campaign against Modi Govt. in villages from 4th to 11th February, burn effigies of both Narendra Modi and Donald Trump and make the General Strike called on 12th February successful with massive protest actions at Tehsil and urban centres across India.

[Courtesy: Newsclick, an Indian news website founded by Prabir Purkayastha in 2009, who also serves as the Editor-in-Chief.]

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Editorial addition:

The SKM’s prediction that the US trade deal will destroy Indian farmers is obvious from news reports that US farm exports to India have been surging even before the trade deal.

According to reports published in the Indian Express and The Japan Times, In January-November 2025, when New Delhi was negotiating with Washington, Indian imports of American agricultural goods rose 34% year on year, from $2.13 billion to $2.85 billion.

US exports to India have been led by tree nuts, cotton and soyabean oil. During January-November 2025, as compared to the same 11 months of the previous year:

• Tree nuts—mainly almonds and pistachios—imports grew by 32.2% to $1.3 billion;
• India allowed duty-free imports of cotton from August to December 2025, because of which US cotton exports to India zoomed from $209 million to $378 million year-on-year;
• Following India reducing its effective import duty on crude soyabean oil from 27.5% to 16.5% in 31 May 2025, its imports from the US zoomed from virtually zero to 212 million.

[Source: Harish Damodaran, “US farm exports to India have been surging even with no trade deal”, The Indian Express, 4 February 2026.]

The above figures and reductions in agricultural import duties on cotton and crude soyabean oil indicate that India has been relaxing import curbs on US agricultural products even before the US trade deal in a bid to appease Trump.

With the trade deal having the clause that India would open “additional products” to US imports in the coming years, it is obvious that the SKM’s concerns are not unfounded.

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India to Eliminate Tariffs on Industrial and ‘Vast Array’ of Agricultural Goods: Jamieson Greer

The Wire Staff

Under the Indo-US ‘trade deal’ that President Donald Trump first announced on Monday, India will eliminate tariffs on ‘virtually all’ industrial goods as well as agri-food items including tree nuts, wines, spirits, fruits and vegetables but would retain protections on some agricultural products, Washington’s top trade negotiator has said.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday (February 3) at a time when no details of the deal have otherwise been made public, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the deal is still being ‘papered’ but that “we know the specifics” and “we know the details”.

India would also reduce tariffs on chemicals and medical devices while the US would maintain an 18% levy as announced by Trump, said Greer. The two sides have agreed that New Delhi will adopt a “process for recognising certain US standards” as part of lowering technical non-tariff trade barriers, he added.

He also said “there are a lot of opportunities” for India to diversify its oil supplies to include more crude from Venezuela and the Gulf relative to Russia.

Earlier in the day Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal, who did not offer any details of the deal, said that it would “protect [the] interests of our sensitive sectors of agriculture and dairy” and that a joint statement would be issued “shortly”.

Neither side has issued an official communique on the deal.

Greer on Tuesday described the deal as a “very exciting opportunity” for both countries.

“On the one hand we will continue to maintain some level of tariff against India – 18% – because we have this giant trade deficit with them, but they’ve also agreed to reduce their tariffs for us on a variety of agricultural products, manufactured goods, chemicals, medical devices, etc,” he said in an interview to CNBC’s Joe Kernen.

Asked about the extent of Indian tariff lines that would go to “zero” as suggested by Trump, Greer said Indian levies on “virtually everything” among industrial goods, i.e. 98% to 99% of these products, would be done away with.

As for agriculture there is “a vast array” of goods that would see an elimination of tariffs, he said. “India, like every country in the world, including the United States, has some protection around some certain key areas. Well, they’ll continue to control that, we’ll continue to work on access, but for a variety of things: tree nuts, wines, spirits, fruits, vegetables, etc., they’re going down to zero.”

Indian resistance to the Trump administration’s insistence that it open up its highly protected agriculture sector was reported to be a key stumbling block in the trade talks that both sides began in February last year, with New Delhi unwilling to grant concessions for corn, soybeans, wheat and dairy, which Greer notably did not mention on Tuesday.

New Delhi has protected agricultural and dairy products, including nuts, fruits and vegetables in some cases, from its recent free trade agreements with other countries.

The two sides also reached an agreement on reducing non-tariff trade barriers, Greer said. India is to have a “process for recognising certain US standards” – which are “effective” and “sometimes too effective” – that would go through its “own processes” before being finalised.

On the president’s suggestion that India could buy Venezuelan oil in lieu of Russian crude, Greer reiterated the Trump administration’s argument that Indian purchases of Russian oil are fuelling Moscow’s war effort. The Indians are “winding down their purchase of Russian oil” and “we’ve been monitoring that”, he said.

“Obviously, they want to diversify from other sources, too, whether it’s Venezuela or the Gulf, etc. There are a lot of opportunities to do this. The Indians are making the right choice,” the trade representative added.

Trump announced the trade deal on Monday night, saying that Washington would reduce its ‘reciprocal’ tariff from 25% to 18% while India would “move forward to reduce their Tariffs and Non Tariff Barriers against the United States to ZERO”. New Delhi would also buy US goods, including energy, agricultural products and technology worth a whopping $500 billion, he claimed.

He also claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop purchasing Russian oil and “[buying] much more from the United States and potentially Venezuela”. A US embassy spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the US’s 25% ‘penalty’ tariff on India’s procurement of Russian crude would cease to exist.

Responding to the president’s announcement over forty minutes later, Modi welcomed the tariff reduction but mentioned neither a trade deal nor any Indian concessions.

Reuters on Tuesday cited Indian refining sources as saying that India cannot replace its Russian oil imports wholesale with Venezuelan crude. The heavy South American oil can be processed in large volumes only by Reliance and Nayara and not state refiners, they added.

[Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]

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Perils of Opening India’s Agricultural Market to United States Business

Nalin Verma

‘Uttam Kheti, Madhyam Vaan, Nirghin Seva, Bheekh Nidaan.’

These words in Bhojpuri, from a folk song popular in the faraway fields and villages of Purvanchal distil a code of life in a few words. Sung in the purvanchal region spanning eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar, they roughly mean ‘agriculture is the worthiest pursuit, trade a middling profession and service is the worst – even begging is better than that’.

This folk wisdom may sound harsh to urban ears, but it captures an agrarian worldview shaped by generations of lived experience. It also offers a telling lens from which to view the current talk about opening India’s agricultural market to the United States.

Usually, this debate is framed in the language of global integration, trade efficiency, market access and consumer choice. Rarely is it viewed from the vantage point of Indian fields and farmers, for whom agriculture is not merely an occupation but a way of living, remembering, asserting dignity and freedom – and surviving against the odds.

So, let it be clear: your writer is no expert on international trade or business. He speaks, instead, as one who has spent a significant part of his life as an agriculturist, or listening closely to farming communities, and ultimately anchoring his stories in the folklore and lived realities of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The contrast

In India, agriculture is not an “abstract” sector, waiting to be liberalised. It is an emotionally-connected and fragile ecosystem sustained by collective memory, social bonds and narrow margins of hope. For farmers, their fields are as precious as the birth of a son. Oxen, cows and buffaloes are not merely sources of sustenance; they are symbols of dignity, continuity and pride.

This stands in sharp contrast to American agriculture, which is built on scale, heavy subsidies, advanced technology and corporate modes of organisation. Indian agriculture, in contrast, rests on small landholdings, unpaid family labour, seasonal uncertainty and cultural continuity.

More than 85% of Indian farmers are small or marginal. Yet their homes, cattle wealth and farm fields remain the ultimate fallback for families – especially for children who lose jobs, fall ill or suffer business losses in the unfarily competitive urban ecosystem.

Recall the lakhs of migrant labourers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, who, during the COVID-19 catastrophe of 2020-22, had to walk hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from Delhi, Punjab, Maharashtra and elsewhere to reach their homes. To them, memories of that long march to their villages are still fresh. They trudged home, carrying on their tired backs or in carts their babies and belongings. In those moments of profound distress, they instinctively chose their villages over cities, despite official claims that they would be provided food, medicine, oxygen and care.

So, the fact that both India and America have vast farmlands does not make them similar. No such long march occurred in the United States of America during the pandemic. Nor do Indian farmers compete with American farmers. They merely coexist with them – as they do with nature and as they must do with policy – often an uneasy coexistence.

Opening India’s market to farm produce from the United States, without robust safeguards for domestic farmers, is not ‘competition’. It is an uneven contest between an industrial system and a survival economy. And it could well signal the beginning of the end of India’s cultural and civilisational threads, woven around agriculture.

In the United States, agriculture is primarily a source of income and profit for large corporations and business houses that enjoy heavy clout within the governance system. In India, agriculture denotes identity, culture and social continuity. In the United States, it is largely another means to generate income and maximise profit.

Unlike Indian farmers, American farmers do not worship their oxen and cows, nor do they celebrate harvest as a civilisational ritual. Their cattle wealth is destined to become steak, meatball and bacon – commodities that join the global supply chains, but little else.

Seen purely through an Indian agriculturist’s lens, powerful corporations and business houses appear to have inspired US President Donald Trump’s decision to push for an agricultural trade deal with an India still mired in rural poverty, inequality and stark disparities.

When subsidised American produce enters Indian markets, price signals are bound to collapse. For a small farmer, even a modest price dip can determine whether a daughter or son goes to school, or whether a loan is rolled over once again. Such realities rarely find space in trade negotiations.

Dairying will hurt too

The US-India trade deal could wreak havoc on the country’s dairy sector too. India’s dairy economy is decentralised, household-based and a part of everyday rural life. One or two heads of cattle often provide a steady income and source of milk protein, especially when rainfall fails. In village homes, money earned from milk and curd pays for medicines, school fees and groceries.

American dairy, by contrast, is industrial, export-oriented and heavily subsidised. Opening India’s dairy sector to such imports would not merely disrupt a market; it would unsettle millions of rural households. It would collide head-on with cultural practices and ethical norms that Indian farmers and consumers still hold dear.

This is precisely why dairy has historically remained a political and social red line in India. Diluting it in the name of trade would be reckless.

As a folktale teller, this writer worries not only about income loss, but about narrative loss; about villages that stop telling stories because the land no longer listens. But even beyond this loss, what India risks in substantive terms is also the loss of its moral and strategic standing, domestically as well as at global forums such as the World Trade Organisation.

India has consistently argued on international platforms that agriculture in developing countries cannot be treated like any other tradable commodity. Opening its own market under pressure from the United States would weaken that long-held position, diminishing India’s credibility and authority, particularly in the eyes of its South Asian neighbours.

Domestically, such a move could provoke strong political backlash. Agriculture is not peripheral to Indian democracy; it lies at the very heart of its anxieties, mobilisations and aspirations.

Death of folklore

Master storyteller Munshi Premchand’s “Do Bailon ki Katha” (A Tale of Two Oxen) centres on Heera and Moti, oxen who forged a deep friendship, rebelled against their new owner after their old master sold them, escaped the cruelty of a cattle shelter, and eventually returned to the man who once loved and cared for them.

Such as the stories of resilience, endurance and survival in the face of bondage and exploitation that stem from Indian farms. Such tories risk being stripped of all meaning if a new trade regime renders cattle into merely economic units, stripped of their cultural and emotional significance.

Or recall Mahendra Kapoor’s soulful rendition in the 1967 blockbuster Upkar: “Meray desh ki dharti sona ugley, ugley heera moti… bailon kay galon mein jab ghungroo, jeevan ka raag sunaatey hain. (The earth of my country yields gold and diamonds; when bells around the oxen’s neck sing the rhythm of life.)” To generations raised after a US-India trade deal reshapes rural India, such a song may sound like it was from another planet.

A way out

This writer readily admits his lack of expertise in international trade relations or geopolitical strategy. Yet, from the lens of an agriculturist and folklorist, he offers a humble suggestion to India’s policy dispensation. This is not an argument against trade, per se. But if India chooses to engage the United States on agriculture, it must protect dairy unequivocally, retain tariff safeguards for vulnerable crops and invest substantially in farmer resilience before opening markets.

Most importantly, policymakers must recognise that small farmers are citizens first, and entitled to protection from the governments they elect, and producers second.

[Nalin Verma is a New Delhi based journalist, author and folklorist. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]