A top Indian trade official said the country is in the home stretch when it comes to finalizing an interim trade deal with the United States.
Three days of discussions between the countries’ trade leads are slated to begin on Tuesday. With the U.S. delegation led by U.S. chief negotiator Brendan Lynch en route or already arrived New Delhi, India’s Minister of Industry and Commerce Piyush Goyal told reporters on Monday that “All the major points [of the agreement] have been settled.”
“I am fully confident that we will conclude the first tranche of the bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. as soon as possible,” he added. The officials aim to sign the preliminary truce and then move on to working through the creation of a more “comprehensive” bilateral trade pact, Goyal said.
During a speech following a visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New Delhi last week for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue meeting, U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor also said 99 percent of the details of the deal had been worked out.
“Our current interim trade agreement is on the table for us to finalize, and that will unlock prosperity for both of our countries. Just last week, India sent a team to Washington D.C. to finalize the last 1 percent of that trade deal,” he said. “We fully expect that the trade deal will be signed over the next few weeks and months.”
India, which faced the highest tariff rate available under President Donald Trump’s now-cancelled International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs at 50 percent, has been eager to see trade tensions diffused. Trump previously accused the country of helping Russia finance its war on Ukraine through the purchase of oil. As a part of the existing trade framework announced in February, India agreed to buy more than $500 billion in American energy products.
A delegation of Indian officials visited Washington, D.C. in April and made headway in solidifying the truce, which has become more urgent in the eyes of India’s government since the U.S. Trade Representative launched a Section 301 investigation into the country and dozens of others based on structural manufacturing capacity and labor practices in March. Such a probe could lead, again, to double-digit duties on Indian products entering the U.S.
The current trade framework proposes that India will draw down or nix tariffs on all American industrial and agricultural and food products. The country also agreed to purchase more U.S.-made technology and coal.
India’s Department of Commerce said that once the interim agreement is signed, the delegations will focus on more granular issues of market access, non-tariff measures, customs and trade facilitation (including strengthened rules of origin), investment promotion and economic security alignment.
