US Spice Industry Asks Washington to Make India Tariff Exemptions Permanent

On 7 October 2026, the American Spice Trade Association (ASTA) — which represents roughly 100 US companies that import, process, manufacture and sell spices — publicly asked the US government to make tariff exemptions on spice imports, including from India, a permanent feature of trade policy rather than a temporary carve-out. ASTA President Donald Pratt, Executive Director Laura Schumer, and Roberto Fanni, chair of the association's science and regulatory committee, raised the request as the US and India continue negotiating a broader bilateral trade agreement.

Why Spices Got an Exemption in the First Place

Most spices are not grown commercially in the United States or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, which is why they were added to exemption lists under Section 122 and Section 301 tariff actions in the first place. ASTA's argument is straightforward: taxing a product nobody grows domestically raises costs for American food manufacturers and consumers without protecting any US industry. According to Pratt, India alone grows more than half of the 109 spices recognised by the International Organization for Standardization, and the US imports roughly $700 million worth of Indian spices every year — a trade relationship ASTA says it has been actively discussing with the Indian Embassy in Washington for the past 18 months.

An Exemption Is Not the Same as a Guarantee

This is the detail that matters most for Indian exporters: the exemption Pratt and his colleagues are defending already exists, but as a policy choice inside an unfinished negotiation, not as a permanent legal fixture. India's Ambassador to the US, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, has noted that Indian spice exports to the American market have grown year-on-year — but that growth has happened inside a tariff environment that could still shift once the broader trade deal is finalised. For exporters who have priced contracts, built buyer relationships or planned shipping schedules around today's duty-free access, that is a real, if quiet, business risk sitting underneath an otherwise encouraging trend.

Business Takeaway

For manufacturers and merchant exporters of Indian spices, the practical move is not to wait for Washington to settle the question. Build pricing models that can absorb a tariff scenario as well as a duty-free one, keep buyer contracts flexible enough to pass through a sudden cost change, and treat ASTA's advocacy as a signal of strong US-side demand rather than a guarantee of US-side policy. The underlying fundamentals — India's scale in global spice production and steady American demand — remain the real reason to stay in this market, tariff exemption or not. SATA GreenX supplies export-grade turmeric powder, black pepper and cumin seeds to international buyers navigating exactly this kind of policy uncertainty.