- The Deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR) is expected to travel to India to prepare the groundwork for the ministerial level meeting of the Trade Policy Forum (TPF).
- The US-India TPF, an inter-agency collaboration led by USTR, is the principal trade dialogue between the two countries and consists of five focus groups:
- Agriculture
- Investment
- Innovation and Creativity (intellectual property rights)
- Services
- Tariff and Non-Tariff Barriers
- In recent times, the US had upped its attack against India’s IPR regime, especially in the pharma sector.
- The USTR in its special report had excluded India out of its priority list, but planned to conduct an ‘out-of-cycle’ review of India’s IPR regime.
- Currently, the bilateral trade is around $100 billion and is expected to cross $500 billion in the next decade.
- Read at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-business/india-us-trade-officials-to-start-work-on-policy-forum-meet/article6091165.ece
Exams Perspective:
- What is Trade Policy Forum?
- US India Bilateral Relations
- Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)