PM Modi, Donald Trump agree to push forward talks on trade deal; foreign secretary hints at tariff liberalisation | India News

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump have agreed to advance negotiations on the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), ANI reported on Saturday citing sources. Further, foreign secretary hinted at the nation’s transfer to liberalise tariffs a day after Trump claimed that India had agreed to convey down duties.
To obtain the targets of the settlement, each leaders have determined to appoint senior representatives to speed up negotiations, to improve trade relations and foster financial cooperation between the 2 nations, the sources revealed.
Meanwhile, a delegation, led by commerce and trade minister Piyush Goyal, visited Washington from March 3 to 6, 2025, for discussions with the US counterpart. The talks have been a part of a broader initiative to broaden bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030, with a spotlight on key sectors reminiscent of power, protection, and know-how.
“Commerce and industry minister (Piyush Goyal) was in US and met his counterparts. Our objective through the BTA is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade across the goods and services sector, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had stated on Friday.

India hints at tariff liberalisation

After Trump claimed that India had agreed to convey down tariffs, foreign secretary Vikram Misri knowledgeable that there dialogue have been on concerning the assertion and refused to remark any additional. He additional hinted that the 2 nations had entered into bilateral agreements “which are based on tariff liberalisation”.
“There’s a lot of interest in statements coming out of the United States. I will not get into that at this point of time because these are ongoing discussions… But I would only point you towards the fact that we have in recent times entered into bilateral trade agreements which are based on tariff liberalisation with several partners,” he said.
“There are ongoing discussions with several other partners on these issues now. I think the ongoing discussions should be seen in that context. That is our general approach and it applies to any such engagement we have,” he added.

Sources point out that India is optimistic about resolving the tariff problem with the US within the coming weeks, ideally earlier than the April 2 deadline. This was mirrored within the MEA’s response on the identical, which stated, “Our objective through the BTA is to strengthen and deepen India-US two-way trade across the goods and services sector, increase market access, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, and deepen supply chain integration between the two countries.”
India has already lowered its common utilized tariffs for main developed nations, together with Australia, UAE, Switzerland, and Norway, underneath lately concluded trade agreements.