Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said India hopes to conclude a bilateral trade agreement with the US by fall or November 2025. Five negotiation rounds have been held, with geopolitical issues slightly delaying talks. The pact aims to more than double bilateral trade to 500 billion dollar by 2030.
Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. FILE PIC
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday expressed hope that India will conclude the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA) with the US by the fall or November this year. He said that “a little bit” of geopolitical issues overtook the trade matters in the negotiations for the pact between the two countries.
“I do hope that things will get back on track soon and we will conclude a bilateral trade agreement by the fall, November or so, as was discussed by our two leaders in February,” Goyal said at the Annual Global Investor Conference 2025 in Mumbai on Tuesday. In his virtual address, he said there is an excitement across the world to expand trading and business relations with India.
“We have had a little bit of geopolitical issues overtaking trade issues in our negotiations with the United States of America,” he added. India has already inked free trade agreements with Australia, the UAE, Mauritius, the UK and the four European nations bloc EFTA, he said. “With the US, we are in dialogue with them on a BTA,” the minister said earlier in the day at an industry chamber event on sustainability.
India and the US have been negotiating the pact since March. So far, five rounds of talks have been completed. A US team was scheduled to visit India from August 25 to hold the next round of talks. However, the US team deferred the visit following the imposition of a 50 per cent duty on Indian goods from August 27.
So far, no new dates have been finalised for the sixth round of negotiations.
India and the US have planned to conclude the first phase of BTA by the fall this year with an aim to more than double bilateral trade in goods and services to $500 billion by 2030 from the current $191 billion. Amid tensions between India and the US, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that at the end of the day, the two great countries will get this solved. Delhi’s values are much closer to ours and to China’s than to Russia’s.
“I think at the end of the day, two great countries (India and the US) will get this solved. But the Indians have not been great actors in terms of buying Russian oil and then reselling it, financing the Russian war effort in Ukraine,” he claimed.
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