- Indian and United States Trade Representative(USTR) has held discussions on various trade and economic issues.
- Deputy USTR has said that the US will consider 301 investigation against India if the trade issues between the two countries are not resolved.
- 301 probe is employed as a precursor to tariffs and other trade measures against a country.It can result in the U.S imposing tariffs or taking other trade action against its trading partners if the parties do not come to a settlement.
- Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act,1974 was also authorised in a 2017 probe that resulted in tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S.Earlier this week,the USTR had announced a 301 probe against France on a digital services tax.
- Recently,French had imposed a digital service tax of 3% on internet giants like Google,Amazon and Facebook.This was done to stop multinationals from avoiding taxes by setting up headquarters in low-tax European Union(EU) countries.
- However,deputy USTR has also said that India finalising data localisation policies could be deal-breaker across the board between the two countries.
- Data localisation refer to regulations that dictate how data on a nation’s citizens is collected, processed and stored inside the country.
- In 2018,the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) had asked payment firms to ensure their data are stored exclusively on local servers.This had affected US foreign firms such as Mastercard and Visa.
