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India and the US are moving towards closing all the open ends of the interim trade agreement, and both sides are likely to execute the "very, very vibrant" first phase of the pact by the middle of next month, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Friday. He said that the US team was in New Delhi from June 2-4 for finalisation of the deal. They held discussions with the Indian team. "I also met with them yesterday, and we are fast moving towards closing all the open ends, and I think sometime by the middle of next month or so, we should be in a position to execute a very, very vibrant first tranche... "It is only the first tranche of our bilateral trade agreement, which will give preferential access to India over our competitors," he told reporters here. He added that a high-level team is expected to visit India towards the end of this month.
The United States is very optimistic about the progress of trade negotiations with India, and a bilateral trade deal remains a priority for the Trump administration, State Department Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said. Pigott was responding to a question by PTI during a roundtable interaction organised by the New York Foreign Press Centre with a select group of international journalists on Thursday. "On trade, we have been very optimistic about the progress of trade talks," he said. Noting the recent visit to India by officials from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Pigott also underscored the role played by US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor in advancing trade and investment ties between the two countries. "He has also made this trade issue really important", most notably through these trade discussions, but also through bilateral investments between the two countries, including millions of dollars worth of SelectUSA investments, Pigott said. SelectUSA is a .
US President Donald Trump said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a good friend and expressed confidence that the United States and India would reach a trade agreement. "We will get to a deal because I like your prime minister a lot. He is a good friend of mine. We get along great, and we are gonna make a deal," Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday. Responding to a question on the trade deal being negotiated between the two countries, Trump said India had taken advantage of US policies for years and charged "tremendous tariffs". "They charged tremendous amounts of tariffs to our companies, and we didn't charge them anything," Trump said. A US delegation was in India earlier this week and concluded four days of negotiations on an interim bilateral agreement on Thursday. India's commerce ministry said the trade talks were marked by a spirit of cooperation and pragmatism, with both sides reaffirming their commitment to concluding a mutually beneficial agreement that
India is engaged with the US on the Section 301 investigations over concerns related to forced labour and excess industrial capacity, the government said on Wednesday. The country is also "parallelly" engaged with the US for finalisation of an interim trade agreement, a framework for which was announced through a joint statement on February 7. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) launched two separate Section 301 investigations on March 11 and 12, 2026, covering 60 economies over concerns related to forced labour and excess industrial capacity. The USTR on June 2 issued its findings in the forced labour investigation and proposed additional tariffs on imports from 60 economies. The proposal includes a 10 per cent tariff on imports from Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan, and a 12.5 per cent tariff on imports from 54 other economies, including India and China. Pakistan and Indonesia are India's competitors in the trade front.
The proposed 12.5 per cent tariff on India by the US Trade Representative (USTR) under Section 301 investigations goes beyond the scope of the provision, and New Delhi should challenge the ambit of the probe, think tank GTRI said on Wednesday. The 12.5 per cent tariff exceeds the USA's WTO commitment. The US Trade Representative has proposed to impose 12.5 per cent additional duties on 54 countries, including India, for failing to prohibit the import of goods produced with forced labour. The action follows investigations launched against 60 countries over what the USTR described as their failure to impose and effectively enforce bans on imports made with forced labour. "The current investigation exceeds the scope of Section 301, which deals with market-access barriers faced by the US firms in the country being investigated and not what it imports and from where", the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said. It added that the investigation is not based on allegations that Indi
The chief negotiators of India and the US on Tuesday began a three-day round of talks here to finalise the details of the proposed interim trade agreement, an official said. The framework for the pact was finalised in February. The US team is led by its chief negotiator Brendan Lynch. India's chief negotiator is Darpan Jain, who is an additional secretary in the Department of Commerce. The talks are underway at Vanijya Bhavan here, the headquarters of the Commerce and Industry Ministry. The two sides are looking to finalise the details of the interim trade agreement and take forward the negotiations for the broader bilateral trade agreement (BTA). On February 7, India and the US issued a joint statement finalising the contours or framework of the first phase of the BTA or an interim trade deal. According to the framework, the US had agreed to reduce tariffs on India to 18 per cent from 50 per cent. It had removed the 25 per cent tariffs on Indian goods for buying Russian oil and
The chief negotiators of the US and India will begin four-day talks here on Monday on finalising the details of the interim trade pact, whose framework was agreed upon in February. The US team will be led by its chief negotiator Brendan Lynch. India's chief negotiator is Darpan Jain, who is an additional secretary in the Department of Commerce. The two sides are "proposed to finalise the details of the interim agreement and take forward the negotiations under the broader BTA on multiple areas such as market access, non-tariff measures, customs and trade facilitation, investment promotion, and economic security alignment," the commerce ministry has said. On February 7, India and the US issued a joint statement finalising the contours or framework of the first phase of the bilateral trade agreement (BTA) or an interim trade agreement. Now, both sides will have to finalise the legal text for that deal. The framework reaffirmed the countries' commitment to the broader India-US BTA ...