KBS Sidhu, IAS (retd.), served as Special Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The KBS Chronicle, a daily newsletter offering independent commentary on governance, public policy and strategic affairs.
My article has been published today in The Print, one of India’s leading digital publications, under the caption: “US-India interim agreement shows strategic use of trade language—millets, almonds, DDGs.”
The piece examines the newly released joint U.S.–India statement on the interim trade agreement, not through the usual lens of headline concessions or tariff arithmetic, but by closely reading the language and terminology used in the document—and why that language matters.
The agreement is explicitly an interim one, a precursor to a far more detailed Bilateral Trade Agreement that will follow. Such frameworks are common in large, politically sensitive negotiations. What makes this one particularly interesting is the deliberate reliance on global trade vocabulary—terms that are technically accurate, internationally standard, but unfamiliar in everyday Indian economic or political discourse.
Expressions such as “tree nuts,” “red sorghum for animal feed,” “dried distillers’ grains (DDGs),” “fresh and processed fruit,” and “wine and spirits” appear innocuous at first glance. Yet each of these terms is a broad umbrella category, capable of covering a wider range of products than a casual reader might assume. Almonds, walnuts and pistachios disappear into “tree nuts”; jowar is rendered as “sorghum”; feed products are routed through DDGs; and liquor enters the text as “wine and spirits.” Even where milk and dairy products are not explicitly named, the structure of trade drafting suggests that real commitments often surface later in annexes and schedules rather than in headline bullets.
The argument is that this drafting style—whether by design or convenience—also helps manage domestic political reactions, particularly in sensitive sectors such as agriculture, dairy and alcohol. Some backlash is understandable. But allowing ill-informed interpretations to drive farmer agitations would be a serious mistake.