Talking about progress on India-US negotiations on the pact, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said India and the US are holding continuous discussions for the proposed bilateral trade agreement. He said ‘Talks are going well...and are continuously going on. There are many sensitive issues, many serious issues, so it is natural that it will take some time’.

Five rounds of talks have been completed so far for the first phase of the bilateral trade agreement between the US and India. A team of Indian officials, headed by Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, was in Washington last month to hold trade talks with their US counterparts. The three-day talks ended on October 17. In February this year, leaders of India and the US directed officials to negotiate a proposed Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). They have fixed a deadline to conclude the first tranche of the pact by the fall of 2025.

These deliberations are important, as relations between the two countries have been under severe strain since the US President Donald Trump administration imposed a steep 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods. It includes a 25 per cent additional import duty for buying Russian crude oil. The proposed pact aims to more than double the bilateral trade to $ 500 billion by 2030 from the current $ 191 billion.

The US remained India's largest trading partner for the fourth consecutive year in 2024-25, with bilateral trade valued at $ 131.84 billion ($ 86.5 billion exports). It accounts for about 18 per cent of India's total goods exports, 6.22 per cent in imports, and 10.73 per cent in the country's total merchandise trade.