An Indian team under commerce secretary Rajesh Agrawal held talks with the US side in Washington last week. Goyal also led an official delegation to New York for trade talks last month.
“We continue to engage with them and talks are progressing,” Goyal told Doordarshan in Berlin.
Leaders of India and the US had in February directed officials to negotiate a proposed bilateral trade agreement, setting a deadline to conclude the first part of the pact by autumn (October-November) this year. Five rounds of negotiations between the two countries have so far been completed.
The negotiations are taking place at a time when relations between the two countries have hit a rough patch after the Trump administration imposed as much as 50% additional tariffs on most Indian goods, which include a 25% extra import duty for buying Russian crude oil.
This prompted India to describe the tariffs as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, especially when others, especially Europe and China, continue to buy Russian energy products in much larger volumes without any penal duties levied on them.Negotiations between the two sides briefly halted after the US announced the extra tariff. Talks resumed in September, with assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch meeting Indian officials in New Delhi.
Both sides had agreed in the September meeting to work towards an early and mutually beneficial conclusion of the trade deal. The US is India’s biggest market, having accounted for a fifth of its total merchandise exports of $437 billion in 2024-25.