India expects the U.S. team to visit the country for the next round of trade talks, though no dates have been finalised yet, an official said on Monday (May 11, 2026).

The Indian side visited Washington, D.C. in April for an in-person round of meetings with their U.S. counterparts to finalise the details of the interim agreement and take forward the negotiations under the Broader Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA).

“Now we expect the U.S. team to visit India next for trade talks. No dates have been decided,” the official said.

After the April meet, both sides have agreed to stay engaged to sustain the momentum ahead for the trade talks.

Last month, officials of the two sides discussed several areas, such as market access, non-tariff measures, technical barriers to trade, customs and trade facilitation, investment promotion, economic security alignment and digital trade.

India and the U.S. issued a joint statement on February 7 finalising a framework for an interim trade agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade.

The framework reaffirmed the countries’ commitment to the broader India-U.S. Bilateral Trade Agreement negotiations.

India’s outbound shipments to the U.S. grew marginally by 0.92% to $87.3 billion during the last fiscal year, while imports increased 15.95% to $52.9 billion. The trade surplus declined to $34.4 billion in 2025-26 from $40.89 billion in 2024-25.

Washington DC

The U.S. and India are not “far off” from finalizing an interim trade deal, but need to bridge some negotiating gaps, such as over discussions on pulses and the staging of tariff reductions, according to a U.S. official.

“We’re not that far off from finalizing the interim trade deal, but some gaps remain,” the official told The Hindu in recent days.

Officials in Washington are working out the nitty-gritty of trade agreements following the U..S Supreme Court’s February 20 ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which was the basis for President Donald Trump’s ‘reciprocal tariffs’, was unlawfully applied. The administration is now working towards re-establishing the reciprocal tariffs using other legislative tools, including ‘Special’ 301 trade investigations conducted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR).

One of the gaps in India-U.S. discussions, as per the U.S. official, is around pulses, with India seeking to safeguard the market for this agricultural commodity and the U.S. wanting greater access to it. Politically, agriculture is a deeply sensitive issue for both countries, with the administration in DC and government in New Delhi not singing from the same song sheet— or, more literally, ‘fact sheet’.

Last month, the White House put out a ‘fact sheet’– including the term “certain pulses” on a list of items that, it claimed, India would cut tariffs on. This and other discrepancies with the joint statement issued by Washington and New Delhi had created a political furore in India. The White House quietly reissued the ‘fact sheet’ – a political statement, rather than a statement of fact– this time omitting the reference to pulses and correcting certain other discrepancies.

However, the U.S. side still appears to be pushing for market access on pulses. Additionally, The Hindu has learned that Washington is seeking reduced staging (i.e., the speeding up of a phased reduction in tariffs) and this is currently one of the gaps in negotiating positions and is under discussion.

Conversations The Hindu has had in recent days suggest that right now, however, trade officials in Washington are not focused on closing the gaps in trade deals but are busy conducting Special 301 investigations launched in March against tens of countries, including India, ostensibly for excess capacity in manufacturing and forced labour.  

​Farmers’ pulse: On India and its demand for pulses

While the U.S. did sign a trade deal since the latest set of 301s was launched, this was with Ecuador, (on March 13), a country with an economy at least 30 times smaller than India and whose bilateral trade with the U.S. is a fraction of U..S-India bilateral trade.

These probes— which are conducted annually on different countries— will enable the imposition of tariffs on top of the universal tariff rate of 10% , imposed on February 24 using Section 122 of the U.S.’s Trade Act, following the Supreme Court ruling. Section 122 tariffs, applied temporarily when there is a balance of payments issue, can be applied for no more than 150 days and cannot exceed 15% as per law.

Mr. Trump had said in February that he would increase the universal 10% rate to 15%. However, this has not happened and officials in DC appeared unsure whether it would happen at all. A question to the White House on the timing of any such hike went unanswered. The USTR also did not provide information on possible rate hike, when approached by The Hindu.

Hiking this universal tariff to 15% would also complicate Washington’s agreements with countries that had reciprocal tariffs of less than 15%. Additionally, the White House has been focused on Iran in terms of foreign policy and the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, domestically.

Meanwhile, countries are busy with another part of the trade agenda: the World Trade Organization’s 14^th ministerial conference in Cameroon March 26-29. Among the contentious topics is trade in e-commerce, where Indian and American positions are not aligned. India has for long wanted an end to the moratorium on tariffs on various forms of e-commerce (software downloads, digital music, etc.) while the U.S. would like to make this permanent.

A team of negotiators from the U.S. will visit India on December 10-12 to take forward talks on the first tranche, dealing with tariffs, of a Bilateral Trade Agreement between the two countries. 

According to sources in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), the U.S. delegation is expected to be led by Deputy US Trade Representative Rick Switzer, while the Indian side will be represented by Darpan Jain, joint secretary in MoCI.

The talks are not expected to constitute an official round of negotiations, the last of which took place in the U.S. in October. However, the two sides are looking forward to making “strong progress” towards addressing the issue of tariffs. 

The U.S. currently has imposed a total of 50% tariffs on imports from India, with 25% of these constituting reciprocal tariffs, and another 25% being imposed as a penalty for India’s imports of Russian oil. 

Last month, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, who was India’s chief negotiator on the U.S. trade deal until he took over as Commerce Secretary in October, said that he was hopeful that the first tranche of the BTA, dealing with tariffs, would be concluded soon.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has also voiced similar sentiments about the deal. 

It has also been reliably learnt from officials closely tracking the deal negotiations that India has presented the U.S. with a revised version of what it considers its “final concessions” on the wider issues of market access and sectoral benefits.

“The officials and negotiators have done what they can on that front,” a second official said. “Now it really is up to the leaders, and that too, one more than the other.” 

There are also indications that the U.S. delegation to India might be accompanied by a “more senior” American government official. 

A team of senior officials from India will visit the U.S. this week for trade talks and negotiations on the proposed Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) are progressing well, a top official said on Monday (October 13, 2025). In February 2025, leaders of the two countries directed officials to negotiate a proposed BTA.

It was planned to conclude the first tranche of the pact by the fall (October-November) of 2025. So far, five rounds of negotiations have been completed.

“The Indian team will visit this week,” the official added.

Last month, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal led an official delegation to New York for trade talks. After that meeting, India and the U.S. decided to continue negotiations for an early conclusion of a mutually beneficial Bilateral Trade Agreement.

Both sides held constructive meetings on various aspects of the trade deal. During the visit, the Minister held meetings with United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer and U.S. Ambassador-designate to India Sergio Gor.

The negotiations are important as the U.S. imposed a 25% reciprocal tariff and an additional 25% penalty on Indian goods entering the American market for purchasing Russian crude oil.

At present, a total of 50% additional import duty is imposed on Indian goods. The pact aims to more than double the bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030, from the current $191 billion.

The U.S. 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). The U.S. accounts for about 18% of India’s total goods exports, 6.22% in imports, and 10.73% in the country’s total merchandise trade.

India expects to increase its energy trade with the U.S. in the coming years, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday (September 23, 2025), adding that India’s energy security would have a “high element” of U.S. involvement going ahead. 

Speaking at an event organised by the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) in New York, Mr. Goyal also said that the two countries would be working closely on nuclear power. The Commerce Minister is in the U.S. to take forward talks on a Bilateral Trade Agreement between India and the U.S.

“India is a big player in the energy trade,” Mr. Goyal said. “We are big importers of energy from across the world, including from the U.S. We expect to increase our trade with the U.S. on energy products in the years to come.” 

Also read | India, U.S. to intensify efforts for a trade deal, says MEA

“And, being close friends and natural partners, our energy security goals will have a very high element of U.S. involvement, which will ensure price stability, diversified sources of energy for India, and help us unlock limitless possibilities with the U.S. on various fronts — energy and beyond,” he added.

This comes at a time when the U.S. has imposed a 25% additional tariff on Indian imports as a “penalty” for importing Russian oil. U.S. President Donald Trump has previously talked about how he wants India to instead buy American oil.

Mr. Goyal said that another area where India and the U.S. plan to work together is nuclear power. 

“It is an area we have been talking about for a long time,” he remarked. “There were certain elements that needed to be set right, and I believe we are working in India to support the private efforts in nuclear power.” 

Mr. Goyal also had strong words for the European Union regarding its plans to impose a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) tax on imports. The mechanism, set to come into force in 2026, will see a substantial increase in tariffs on European imports from India, among other countries. 

“There is a lot of effort to address the impact of climate change through trade measures and we have to be cautious that we don’t allow trade and the fight against climate change to get conflated,” he said. “That has serious risks of actually dissuading countries rather than encouraging countries in joining the movement in addressing climate change.”

He further said that CBAM could isolate the EU and hurt their economy as it would render them uncompetitive in global trade.

“They would actually cause inflation in their own economy, they would land up causing their infrastructure and cost of living to become unviable,” Mr. Goyal added. “Their products will lose market share in exports. And at the same time, this green protectionism is like a trap in which if somebody buries his head, he may find it very difficult to come out of the sand.” 

The Commerce Minister has been vocal about his resistance to CBAM for a while now, even threatening retaliatory action by India if Europe goes ahead with its plans. 

Mr. Goyal also spoke about the issue of critical minerals, saying that the best way forward for all is to ensure resilient critical mineral supplies and diversify sources to ensure that “trade is not weaponised”.