India, US aim to wrap up first phase of trade deal by next month's G20 Summit

Nisha Biswal, former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia. Wikipedia picture.

There is a desire within the US and India to try to conclude phase one of the bilateral trade agreement, perhaps by the G20 Summit in Florida next month, a former senior US diplomat said.

India and the US finalised a framework for the first phase of the bilateral trade agreement in February following a phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. However, changes in the American tariff landscape have led to renewed negotiations, which are yet to conclude.

"By all expectations, I think that there's a desire to try to conclude the phase one deal, perhaps by the G20," Nisha Biswal, former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, told PTI in an interview.

The comments come after US President Donald Trump's Republican Party suffered heavy losses in the November 3 midterm elections, losing ⁠control of both chambers of the US Congress.

With some races still undecided, Democrats scored their biggest victory ⁠in the House of Representatives since at least 2008 while flipping Senate seats ⁠in traditionally conservative states including Kansas, South Carolina and Texas.

Biswal termed the ongoing trade talks as "complicated" and said that the negotiators have to work through certain areas, including the demand for comparative advantage made by New Delhi over its rivals in sectors such as textiles.

"For the administration, trying to figure out how to address that and still stay within the strictures of the tools that it is using is also going to be an issue that they have to navigate," she said.

The G20 brings together major industrialised and developing economies to discuss global issues. Under a rotating presidency, it holds ministerial meetings throughout the year, culminating in an annual Leaders' Summit, which Trump will chair on December 14-15 in Florida, US.

Biswal said she was hopeful that Washington and New Delhi were aware of both the importance of the US-India corridor and the ability of the trade negotiators to actually reach an outcome.

"They are two extraordinarily complex economies. So I understand that this is not quite as easy as a back-of-the-envelope type of agreement; we're actually trying to get through a lot of tricky issues," she said.

Biswal said the India-US relationship has been a mixed bag during President Trump's second tenure, which started in 2025.

She said the bilateral relationship stabilised after Modi and Trump announced the framework of the first phase of the trade deal in February this year and negotiations began in earnest.

"2026, I think, saw a kind of stabilisation in the relationship as the trade negotiations kind of took off in earnest, particularly after India made some very smart moves," Biswal said.

The former diplomat said the US took note when Prime Minister Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Tianjin last year.

"When India and the EU signed their trade agreement, again, Washington took notice. You saw from US Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, comments to that effect in terms of India-EU," Biswal said.

"Not soon thereafter, you saw some agreement in principle on a phase one, you know, deal between the US and India," Biswal said.

On October 20, Trump said Washington and New Delhi were "pretty close" to reaching a trade deal, adding that the proposed pact would differ from earlier agreements.

Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, he said India wanted to make a deal and expressed confidence that an agreement would be reached.

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said New Delhi will have one of the "best" trade deals with Washington in every respect.

He said that India has negotiated a very good set of outcomes with the US in the pact.

"And in every respect, India will have one of the best deals with the US," he told reporters in Visakhapatnam.

Talks continue between India and the United States over finalisation of 1st tranche of India-US Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), with both sides having held discussions in New Delhi last week on the customs and trade facilitation chapter of the proposed pact. A two-member trade track team from the US was in Delhi on 2nd and 3rd November for discussions with their Indian counterparts.

Both sides had finalised framework for the 1st tranche of the BTA in February 2026, while changes in tariffs due to the US Supreme Court order later led to further discussions. On 26th October, India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal had said that both have "concluded most of the discussions and are fine-tuning the agreement" for their proposed bilateral trade pact.