Piyush Goyal at G20: India has no ‘structural excess capacity’, rejects dumping concerns based on broad country-wide assumptions

New Delhi: India does not have structural excess manufacturing capacity in sectors identified by the G20 presidency, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said, underscoring New Delhi's commitment to steer clear of incentives that cause price distortions and promote dumping.

Goyal also said measures at the border must be based on specific and verifiable evidence rather than presumptions about entire countries, regions or sectors, and must respect due process and WTO rules. India's installed capacity serves both domestic and global needs, and New Delhi has taken steps to prohibit the import of goods made using forced labour, Goyal told ministerial delegates on the concluding day of the G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting in Milwaukee.

Industrial capacity in itself is not the cause of dumping but distortions can arise where geographical concentration of production is driven by hidden subsidies and support, Goyal was cited as saying in a commerce and industry ministry statement.


"India's manufacturing capacity serves its domestic and global needs and that, in the sectors identified by the G20 Presidency, India does not have structural excess capacity," Goyal said. The minister is visiting the US from September 29 to October 5 to attend the G20 trade ministers' meeting and hold deliberations with the US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, on the bilateral trade deal.

Goyal added that diversification of production and supply chains is a legitimate objective, but it cannot be used as a pretext for measures outside World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules or to shift the burden of adjustment onto developing countries, which must retain policy space to industrialise.

Dumping Threat

He said India shares the concern of several G20 members that trade-distorting support in some countries leads to dumping and predatory pricing, and it addresses such practices through evidence-based WTO measures, including anti-dumping and countervailing duties. His statement assumes significance in the wake of the US Trade Representative having launched two separate Section 301 investigations against 60 economies, including India, over concerns related to forced labour and excess industrial capacity.

The US has already imposed 10% duty on India under the forced labour case. The US has flagged excess capacity issues in sectors such as steel, textiles, aluminium, automobiles and semiconductors, among others. Noting that India is the fastest-growing large economy in the world and is building manufacturing value chains from design to finished goods as a trusted link in global supply chains, he said that India's commitment to forced labour elimination is absolute and unconditional. As per the statement, measures at the border must be based on specific and verifiable evidence rather than presumptions about entire countries, regions or sectors, and must respect due process and WTO rules.

Labour Standards

He insisted that the International Labour Organization is the competent, universal and tripartite body for labour standards, and that India supports the objective of eliminating forced labour and voluntary exchange of good practices among G20 members, provided such cooperation does not involve monitoring of members, create new obligations or result in information being used as a basis for unilateral trade action. On updating the Most-Favoured-Nation principle, the minister said India's trade with G20 members depends on a transparent, non-discriminatory and rules-based trading system.

Goyal said consensus remains central to the WTO and that special and differential treatment must be preserved to enable developing countries to catch up with developed economies and called for restoration of the two-tier dispute settlement system.