Vice President JD Vance and US Trade Representative Jameieson Greer announced reaching agreed-upon terms of reference for a roadmap toward a Bilateral Trade Agreement between the United States and India. These terms have not been made public. The Trump administration continues to claim that other deals with Japan, South Korea, and other countries are advancing rapidly.

In response, Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

“Trump continues to con American workers, claiming that he’s upending our unfair trading system, while actually doubling down on secretive and rushed ‘negotiations’ that will only lead to more of the same corporate-dominated trade deals at the expense of working people.

“He’s not using trade and tariff policy to protect workers – he’s wielding reckless and unstrategic tariff threats as a cudgel to push more antidemocratic deals that benefit his corporate cronies. Look no further than Big Tech’s hit list of other countries’ privacy, anti-monopoly and online safety laws that he waved around when he announced so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’.

“Without transparency and public and Congressional participation in the content of these trade negotiations, it is virtually certain that these ‘deals’ will be nothing more than another authoritarian power grab, as other countries and corporations bend the knee to Trump, benefiting billionaires at the expense of the rest of us.”

This post was originally published on Common Dreams.