China ready to buy more products from India as US tariffs loom

Bilateral trade between the neighbors stood at $101.7 billion in 2023-24, according to India’s trade ministry

China is willing to buy more Indian products to balance trade, Beijing’s Ambassador Xu Feihong said just ahead of a US tariff announcement expected to hit the south Asian neighbors.

“We are willing to work with the Indian side to strengthen practical cooperation in trade and other areas, and to import more Indian products that are well-suited to the Chinese market,” the ambassador to India was quoted as saying by China’s state-run Global Times, in a story posted Monday.

Bilateral trade between the neighbors stood at $101.7 billion in 2023-24, according to India’s trade ministry, with India running a significant deficit. India’s main exports include petroleum oil, iron ore, marine products and vegetable oil, amounting to $16.6 billion, according to the government figures.

The envoy’s remarks were to mark the 75th anniversary of the diplomatic ties.

US President Donald Trump, who is set to roll out reciprocal tariffs Wednesday on countries around the world, has called out China and India for trade practices that he sees as unfair.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lavished praise on Trump in a podcast in March and has been making concessions to appease the US leader. Modi also said he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to restore normalcy at the border.

Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors plunged after clashes in a disputed region of the Himalayas in 2020, when skirmishes between troops led to the first deadly clashes in four decades. New Delhi hit back economically, by blocking investment and curtailing access to the vast Indian market for Chinese tech firms especially.

Xi and Modi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit last year, agreeing to restart direct flights in a sign of a thaw. They had not had a formal bilateral meeting prior to that since 2019.