CaratZero, effective immediately: India's jewelry enters Britain duty-free
The India–UK trade pact took force July 15, and the first zero-duty consignments of gold, silver and diamond jewelry shipped within a day. Britain scraps duties on 96.8% of tariff lines; India's $13.44 billion export book eyes a bigger share.
§1The cargo moved in a day.
The paperwork changed on Wednesday and the cargo moved on Thursday. India's Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom came into force on July 15, a year after prime ministers Modi and Starmer signed it, and by the following day the first zero-duty consignments of gold, silver and diamond jewelry had shipped for Britain. Under the pact, the UK immediately scraps duties on 96.8% of tariff lines covering 97.7% of trade value — and gems and jewelry sit squarely inside the zero.
§2Written for factories, not vaults.
The carve-outs are as instructive as the concessions. Duties on gems and jewelry fall away in both directions, but India excluded specific categories of gold bars from the agreement — jewelry travels free while monetary metal stays fenced, a distinction that tells you the deal was written for factories rather than vaults. For Indian exporters, the prize is price competitiveness in a market where their finished goods previously carried tariff drag against duty-free competitors.
The scale is meaningful on both sides of the ledger. India shipped $13.44 billion of goods to the UK in fiscal 2025–26 against $11.68 billion coming the other way, and commerce minister Piyush Goyal singled out gems and jewelry among the sectors with the most to gain, with more than 75,000 professionals and 900-plus companies expected to benefit. British retailers, for their part, just watched the landed cost of Indian-made stock fall by the width of a tariff — a margin gift in a year when jewelers have needed one.
Trade reroutes around friction the way rivers route around rock, and Britain has just made itself the low-friction showcase for the world's largest jewelry manufacturing base.
§3Friction moved; trade follows.
The desk has spent the summer writing about trade friction moving in the other direction — the American tariff arithmetic that prices natural and lab-grown goods differently at the border. The India–UK pact is the reverse image: a corridor deliberately sanded smooth while others grow teeth. Trade reroutes around friction the way rivers route around rock, and Britain has just made itself the low-friction showcase for the world's largest jewelry manufacturing base.
Duty-free lines move market share slowly, then all at once. The first beneficiaries are Indian exporters with UK distribution already built; the next are Britain's mid-market chains, whose cost of goods just quietly improved.
Watch Hatton Garden's sourcing sheets and the high-street spec books by Diwali — zero is a price every buyer understands.
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Subscribe free →Tariff arithmetic: zero for natural, eighteen for grown
The American border prices stones differently; Britain just stopped.