Prime Minister Narendra Modi surrendered to the diktats of US Imperialism and agreed to a humiliating lop-sided trade deal by seriously compromising India’s sovereignty. The “deal” announced unilaterally by Donald Trump over his social media platform, and welcomed by Narendra Modi on X, seems more like a promise extracted with a boot on the throat. The President of USA announced that the PM agreed to stop buying Russian oil; the US will, in return, charge a “reduced” reciprocal tariff of 18 per cent; India will reduce its tariffs and non-tariff barriers to zero; the PM committed to "Buy American" at a much higher level, in addition to over $500 billion of US energy, technology, agricultural, coal, and many other products. Modi went on to express delight that made in India products will now have a reduced tariff and also thanked Trump on behalf of 1.4 billion people of India. Rarely in history has such a sell-out been packaged as beneficial and an unequal deal been accepted with such servile gratitude. The deal was struck under a veil of secrecy without any discussion in Parliament or with States. For the first time, a deal of such far-reaching consequences was announced in the virtual space.

Countries that won their independence after a prolonged anti-imperialist struggle have had ample experiences wherein direct colonial rule infringed on their rights and ability to protect or promote domestic agriculture as well as industries. The deliberate neglect of agriculture and de-industrialisation was accompanied by colonial plunder, drain of resources and dumping of manufactured goods, often aided by military prowess. The subjugation of countries, unbridled access to their markets turning their people into customers for their goods in the erstwhile era is now making a return in a different form. The difference today is that the Indian ruling class represented by the BJP-RSS led NDA Government is rolling out the red carpet for imperialism with a promise of unrestricted market access, unbridled profits and absolute absence of concern for the lives and livelihoods of the millions of peasants in India. If direct colonial rule was responsible for economic retrogression, then unequal trade deals are bound to create a similar effect now. 

Deal Mortgaging Lives of Indian Farmers

The India-USA Interim Framework Agreement on Trade has been preceded by other unequal Free Trade Agreements with UK, European Union and will be followed by a slew of FTAs. The allocation for the Common Agricultural Programme is the largest item on the EU Budget - it was around 38 per cent of the total expenditure between 2014 and 2020 totalling to 408.31 billion euros (Rs.43.8 lakh crore). The amount earmarked for 2021 to 2027 is about 387 billion euros (Rs.41.5 lakh crore) or 31 per cent of the total budget. In India, the latest Union Budget saw Rs.1.37 lakh crore or merely 2.7 per cent of the Budget being allocated to Agriculture and Allied Sectors.

US Federal Government pay-outs for farm programmes in 2026 are forecasted at $44.3 billion (Rs.4,02,132 crore) for about 18.65 lakh farmers. This would imply per capita subsidies to the tune of $23,753 or about Rs.21.56 lakh. In India, farm subsidies amount to about $57.5 billion (around Rs.5 lakh crore) and there are about 14.6 crore farmers (146 million). The per capita subsidy for an Indian farmer will be around $373 or about Rs.34,000. The average farm size in USA is 469 acres, while farms over 2000 acres control 61 percent of all farmlands. In USA, “Small Farms” with less than $3,50,000 or around Rs.3.18 crore in gross cash farm income represents about 85 per cent of all operations. In India, the average farm size is about 2.67 acres and 86 percent own less than 5 acres of land, earning less than Rs.1,64,000 or about $1807 taking the Government claims to be true. The poor Indian farmer living in precarious conditions with fast depleting State support will be put in direct competition with highly subsidised rich farmers and agribusinesses from USA.

The US-India Joint Statement confirms the worst fears of farmers. The BJP-NDA Government has mortgaged the lives and livelihoods of India’s farmers. It has once again demonstrated its absolute subservience to US imperialism and domestic monopolies. This is despite the earlier experiences of the deleterious impact of the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement as well as the India-ASEAN FTA on Indian farmers, especially growing rubber, tea, coffee, pepper and other spices. The duty-free imports had led prices to crash and suicides by many farmers, especially in the State of Kerala.

Already, India’s cotton imports reached an all-time high during the 2024-25 period (October to September), soaring to 4.13 million bales. The USA emerged as the biggest exporter to India with 856,000 bales surging by 200 per cent between 2023-24 and 2024-25, closely followed by Brazil and Australia who exported 854,000 and 849,000 bales respectively. Buckling under the pressure of Trump’s tariff war, despite the drastic increase in imports, the Union government announced a corresponding 11 per cent import duty waiver on cotton in 2025–26 leading to a 95 per cent surge in imports from USA. Continuing import of raw cotton from USA will lead to a further price crash for Indian farmers and the crisis-ridden, suicide-prone cotton fields will witness intensifying indebtedness as well as greater peasant suicides. When a delegation of Samyukta Kisan Morcha visited the suicide-prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, we found a drastic decline of prices of cotton as well as soybean, which is another crop USA is looking forward to exporting to India.

Piyush Goyal’s Lies

The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal made the BJP-NDA Government’s intentions clear when he stated that, “India has the facility to purchase raw cotton from US, then its finished textile products exports will be accepted at zero percent reciprocal tariff”, and “when the India-US Free Trade Interim Agreement is finalised, India will get it in fine print similar to the concessions extended to Bangladesh”. This thoroughly exposes the lies that “agriculture is out of the ambit of US Trade Deal” and “the Prime Minister will never compromise the interests of the farmers. The government is clearly pursuing the interests of the ruling class by encouraging Indian industrialists to import cotton from the USA. The argument that farmers’ interests will not be harmed because the total US exports are relatively limited, and even if India fully removes import duties, domestic cotton consumption will not be significantly affected, is totally wrong. It ignores the impact that increased imports would have on domestic cotton prices - just as the rubber farmers were devastated, especially in Kerala, after the India-ASEAN FTA. Exposed to unrestricted global competition, the Indian cotton farmers will not be able to compete with heavily subsidised and technologically advanced cotton producers in USA. It must be remembered that among farmers driven to suicide due to the ongoing agrarian crisis in India, a disproportionately large number come from cotton-growing regions such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

Piyush Goyal resorted to lies and deceit to mislead the farmers; he claimed that no concessions were made to USA in the agrarian sector. The very first paragraph of the India-USA Joint Declaration shows otherwise. In reality, cheap, highly subsidized products from big American agribusiness and farmers will flood Indian markets, causing prices to crash. It states: “India will eliminate or reduce tariffs on all U.S. industrial goods and a wide range of U.S. food and agricultural products, including dried distillers’ grains (DDGs), red sorghum for animal feed, tree nuts, fresh and processed fruit, soybean oil, wine and spirits, and additional products.” It has been left to anyone’s guess as to what “additional products” would include. Dangerously for the cereal farmers of India, there is no clear statement that tariff protection on cereals would be retained; this could mean a comprehensive opening up of India’s agricultural market to predatory agri-businesses of USA. Any such eventuality will put farmers’ livelihoods in peril and so will India’s food security be compromised. A return to the ‘ship-to-mouth’ days and dependence on humiliating schemes like PL-480 will be its consequence.

India has also committed to buying $500 billion worth of goods from the USA over the next five years implying this agreement would require it to make $100 billion in purchases each year.  USA is using the deal to overcome the trade deficit with India and has pressurised India for such an unequal deal. Piyush Goyal also conveniently evades the fact that while India’s exports initially faced low U.S. tariffs of around 2.5 per cent, the U.S. later unilaterally raised these duties to 25 per cent and even 50 per cent on certain goods before now bringing it to 18 per cent which is about seven-fold increase over the original tariff. Even as the BJP-RSS are on an over-drive and celebrating an abject surrender, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was emphatic that the deal would help “export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices, and pumping cash into rural America”. Even as China, Brazil and other countries have refused to be cowed down by the coercive tariffs of Trump, the Sangh Parivar, true to its legacy of collaboration with imperialism, has once again betrayed the people of India. It is aggressively pursuing Trump’s plan of Making America Great Again.

These unequal trade deals will do what the three Farm Acts failed to do. It will result in the pauperisation and dispossession of the peasantry. They will be forced to migrate under precarious circumstances to urban centres, work at the bidding of the bourgeoisie in an atmosphere devoid of workers’ rights. It is the chains of such servitude that awaits us if we do not resist them. It is a “do or die” moment for the millions of peasants. People across India came out on the streets on February 12, against these unequal trade deals. The CPI(M) and left and democratic parties, the class and mass organisations as well as the issue-based united fronts of working people – SKM, CTUs and Platform of Agricultural and Rural Workers – have also decided to take up a resolute struggle and resist the moves.  Broadest unity will be built and all energies will be pooled to make the March 24, 2026, Delhi Chalo protest a massive success.