{"id":287634,"date":"2025-07-24T10:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287634\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T10:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:08:13","slug":"uk-and-india-leaders-starmer-and-modi-set-to-sign-a-major-trade-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287634\/","title":{"rendered":"UK and India leaders Starmer and Modi set to sign a major trade deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON — British leader Keir Starmer<\/a> and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a> are set to sign a hard-wrought trade agreement<\/a> Thursday that will slash tariffs on products including Scotch whisky and English gin shipped to India and Indian food and spices sent to the U.K.<\/p>\n

The two prime ministers are due to hold a signing ceremony at Chequers, the British leader\u2019s country residence outside London.<\/p>\n

The trade agreement between India and Britain, the world\u2019s fifth- and sixth-largest economies, was announced in May, more than three years after negotiations started, and stalled, under Britain\u2019s previous Conservative government.<\/p>\n

The U.K. government said the deal will reduce India\u2019s average tariff on British goods from 15% to 3%. Whisky and gin tariffs will be halved from 150% to 75% before falling to 40% by year 10 of the deal. Automotive tariffs will fall from over 100% to 10% under a quota. <\/p>\n

Britain said the deal is expected to increase bilateral trade by 25.5 billion pounds ($35 billion) annually from 2040 and add almost 5 billion pounds ($6.8 billion) a year to the British economy.<\/p>\n

Starmer said the agreement was \u201ca major win for Britain\u201d and would create thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s Trade Ministry said in May that 99% of Indian exports would face no import duty under the deal, which applies to products including clothes, shoes and food.<\/p>\n

Formal talks began in 2022 on a free trade agreement<\/a> that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson<\/a> hailed as a key goal after Britain\u2019s departure from the European Union in 2020. Johnson famously promised to have a deal done by the Diwali holiday in October of that year.<\/p>\n

The two countries held 13 rounds of negotiations without a breakthrough before talks were suspended while both nations held general elections in 2024. <\/p>\n

Modi was re-elected<\/a> and Britain replaced the Conservative government with one led by Starmer\u2019s center-left Labour Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — British leader Keir Starmer and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to sign a hard-wrought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[107444,3907,748,51,393,4179,4884,8614,3058,1144,285,712,16,15,1764,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-287634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-107444","11":"tag-article","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-international-agreements","18":"tag-international-trade","19":"tag-northern-ireland","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-scotland","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-wales","25":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114907663760757420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}