External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Friday said that India and US are determined to clinch a trade deal soon and that negotiations are underway with “high urgency”.
Jaishankar, who was speaking at the Carnegie Global Tech Summit 2025 in New Delhi, suggested that while India is looking to fast-track talks with US, the Trump administration appears to be dragging its feet on the issue.
The minister, however, expressed hope that India will find a trade fix that works for both sides. The remarks come just two days after US President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs imposed on all countries, including India. China was the only exception.
“Within a month of the change in administration (in the US), we actually have conceptually an agreement that we will do a bilateral trade agreement, that we will find a fix which will work for both. And it’s not an open-ended process because that’s all from frustration from the trade negotiations, we did four years of talking in the first Trump administration,” he said.
#WATCH | Speaking at the Carnegie India Global Technology Summit, EAM Dr S Jaishankar says, “Within a month of the change in administration ( in the US), we actually have conceptually an agreement that we will do a bilateral trade agreement, that we will find a fix which will pic.twitter.com/mKIoB2v9CC ANI (@ANI) April 11, 2025
Jaishankar said that the deal didn’t get done last time when Trump was in power. “… This time around, we are certainly geared up for a very high degree of urgency. We see a window here and we want to seize that window. Our trade teams are really charged up… This is normally a complaint which in the past was made about us, that we are the guys slowing it down. Today, it is the other way around. We are trying to communicate that urgency on all three accounts,” he said.
A government official told Reuters that India wants to move quickly on a trade deal with US after Trump’s decision to pause hefty reciprocal tariffs.
India and US agreed in February to work on the first phase of a trade deal to be wrapped up by autumn 2025, aiming to reach two-way trade worth $500 billion by 2030.