India, US remain engaged in talks

India and the United States finished a Washington trade round this week without closing the first-phase deal, and both sides said they would keep talking. (theweek.in) (thehindu.com) India’s commerce ministry said about a dozen Indian officials were in Washington from April 20 to April 22 to finalize details of the first phase of a bilateral trade agreement. The agenda included market access, non-tariff measures, technical barriers to trade, customs, investment, economic security alignment and digital trade. (theweek.in) Foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on April 23 that the talks were “ongoing and constructive,” while a U.S. official told Reuters the discussions were constructive but that gaps remain. The Indian delegation was led by senior commerce ministry official Darpan Jain. (usnews.com) (business-standard.com) The immediate goal is an interim pact, not the full India-U.S. Bilateral Trade Agreement. India and the U.S. announced a framework for that interim deal on February 7, 2026, after launching the broader Bilateral Trade Agreement process in February 2025. (commerce.gov.in) (ustr.gov) That February framework sketched concrete trade-offs. India said it would eliminate or cut tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and a range of farm products, while the U.S. said it would apply an 18% reciprocal tariff rate on Indian goods and remove tariffs on selected products if the interim agreement is completed. (commerce.gov.in) Those terms have since become harder to lock in because U.S. tariff policy changed. Indian officials have said the agreement needs recalibration after court and policy shifts in Washington altered the tariff landscape that existed when the February framework was drafted. (theweek.in) (thehindu.com) The scale of the relationship explains the pressure to keep negotiating. The U.S. Trade Representative says U.S. goods trade with India reached $149.4 billion in 2025, including a $58.2 billion U.S. goods deficit, while total U.S.-India goods and services trade was estimated at $212.3 billion in 2024. (ustr.gov) Both governments are also working toward a much bigger target. Jaiswal said the two sides are aiming for $500 billion in bilateral trade by 2030, more than double the roughly $212 billion level cited for 2024. (usnews.com) (ustr.gov) For now, the message from Washington and New Delhi is narrower than a deal announcement: the talks moved forward, the sticking points did not disappear, and the interim pact still has no public deadline. (thehindu.com) (theweek.in)