Govt aims to expand trade in energy products with US: Piyush Goyal

India assures US of a bigger role in its energy security, with plans to boost trade in energy and nuclear cooperation, while avoiding mention of Russian oil imports amid tariff tensions

India has assured the United States that Washington remains a key partner in New Delhi’s energy security strategy, though it made no mention of its heavy oil imports from Russia. 

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the government aims to expand trade in energy products with the US over the coming years. Speaking in New York, he said: “The world recognises that this (energy security) is one area where we all have to work together. We are big importers of energy from across the world, including from the US. We expect to increase our trade to the US in energy products in the years to come.” 

 

“Our energy security goals will have a very high element of US involvement, which will ensure high stability,” he added. Diversified sources of energy, he argued, would not only strengthen India’s security but also unlock “limitless possibilities” with Washington in sectors beyond energy. Goyal was delivering a keynote address at an event hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York, the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), and ReNew. 

His remarks come in the wake of the Donald Trump administration’s decision last month to impose a relatively high 50 per cent tariff on most Indian goods, including a 25 per cent punitive levy linked to India’s purchase of Russian oil. 

Goyal and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, along with top Indian officials, are currently in New York for talks with their US counterparts aimed at ironing out differences. On Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said “a lot of progress” had been made during his meeting with Jaishankar on the question of Russian oil imports.

 

For Goyal, the priority remains an “early conclusion of a mutually beneficial trade agreement”. He met the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, in New York to discuss the ongoing negotiations as well as other trade-related matters.

 

The minister also highlighted nuclear power as an area for greater collaboration between India and the US. “It’s an area that we’ve been talking about for a long time. There were certain elements which needed to be set right. I believe we are working in India to support private efforts on nuclear power,” he said.

 

Another challenge, he noted, is to build resilient supplies of critical minerals and diversify sources to avoid the “weaponisation” of trade. “We all have to work very seriously to align our regulatory frameworks to see how this cross-border energy can be guaranteed without any concerns of geopolitics overtaking energy resilience or energy security,” he said.

 

Turning to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), Goyal argued that the measure would have far-reaching implications. “In fact, it could isolate the EU and hurt their economy because they would be like a small island and everybody else around them would be trading,” he said. “They would become price-competitive, they would actually cause inflation in their own economy.”

 

Their infrastructure and their cost of living would become unviable, and their products would lose market share and exports, he added.