New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said talks between India and the US for the proposed trade agreement are progressing, and expressed hope that both sides would work towards a fair and equitable agreement in the near future. An Indian official team, headed by Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, was in Washington last week to hold trade talks with their US counterparts. The three-day talks ended on October 17. “We are in dialogue with the USA, our teams are engaged. We recently had the Commerce Secretary visit the US, and he met with his counterparts. We continue to engage with them and talks are progressing. “We hope to work towards a fair and equitable agreement in the near future,” Goyal told Doordarshan in Berlin.

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 (October-November) of 2025. So far, five rounds of negotiations have been completed. Last month, Goyal also led an official delegation to New York for trade talks.

These deliberations are important as the relations between the two countries have been reeling under severe stress after the 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. India has described these duties as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”. The talks halted for a brief period after the US announced high tariffs on Indian goods.

After a brief gap, Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch held talks with Indian officials in New Delhi on September 16. In that meeting, both sides agreed to push for an early and mutually beneficial conclusion of the agreement. The proposed pact aims to more than double the bilateral trade to USD 500 billion by 2030 from the current USD 191 billion.

The US remained India’s largest trading partner for the fourth consecutive year in 2024-25, with bilateral trade valued at USD 131.84 billion (USD 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. India’s merchandise exports to the US declined by 11.93 per cent to USD 5.46 billion in September due to the high tariffs imposed by Washington, while imports increased by 11.78 per cent to USD 3.98 billion during the month, according to the Commerce Ministry data.