India-US trade deal nears finish line, Jaishankar says both sides close to agreement

India and the United States have resolved most issues in their proposed trade agreement. An early conclusion could improve market access while securing balanced tariff advantages for India.

India and the United States have resolved most issues concerning their proposed trade deal, which could be finalised soon as negotiations enter their last stage, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

His remarks came a month before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's likely visit to the US for the G20 Summit. Modi and US President Donald Trump may meet on the sidelines of the summit to review bilateral ties and progress on the trade agreement.

Speaking at the HT Leadership Summit, Jaishankar said the negotiations were approaching the "finishing line". He added that many of the remaining concerns were "not so much at our end" and that more changes had taken place on the American side.

"Well, it's certainly our hope, and in many ways anticipation that we are at the last stretch. That's not a secret," he said in response to a question about the negotiations.

There has been speculation that India and the US could announce the agreement after talks between Modi and Trump on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, scheduled to be held in Miami on December 14 and 15.

Jaishankar said he understood that most issues had been resolved. "There is the last stretch of issues and in many cases these concerns are not so much at our end, because the changes have been more at the American end than our end," he said.

"The hope is that we should close it out soon. It's always the case that in that last period, everybody's impatient," he added.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said in Mumbai last month that the two countries were very close to finalising the trade deal.

India and the US have been negotiating the proposed agreement since early 2025 to address tariff disputes, remove barriers other than tariffs and improve access to each other's markets. India is seeking better tariffs for its goods in the US than those offered to its competitors.

"For us, the key is that we want a trade deal which is beneficial, it is balanced and which would give us a comparative advantage over groups of comparable economies," Jaishankar said. "That is really what we are looking for and that is really our expectation of where we would be when the trade deal is done."

He also called for the proposed agreement to be viewed from the wider perspective of both countries. Jaishankar said many of India's early trade agreements were with competitive Asian economies and the expected gains from those free trade agreements did not fully materialise.

"Today, I think if you look at the FTAs which have been done in the last few years, I think they've been much more thought through. They've been much more strategically and economically assessed," he said.

Jaishankar said the US was India's biggest market and a trade agreement with the world's largest economy would benefit the country.

"When you look at this big context and say there is the US, our biggest market in a way, the world's largest economy, obviously having a trade deal with such an economy would benefit us," he said.

"For the US, President Trump is obviously looking to do a whole set of bilateral deals to improve markets for himself. Now, the challenge is to find a landing point," Jaishankar added.

He said the negotiations could not have been completed quickly because they concerned serious issues affecting people's jobs and lives. "I think this is not something which could have been done quickly and magically with sort of bold thinking and rapid movement, because these are very serious issues, people's jobs and people's lives are at stake," he said.

Jaishankar also indicated that tariff-related issues had been resolved. "If you are serious, you go tariff line by tariff line. That takes time. Now we've done it the painstaking way. Not everybody has had the patience or frankly the understanding to bear with it," he said, as quoted by PTI.

"But I think having put in that effort, we have now reached almost the finishing line. I think bear with it and hopefully we'll get it," he added.

India and the US have, therefore, resolved most matters concerning the proposed trade agreement and are working through the remaining concerns, with Jaishankar expressing hope that the deal will be concluded soon.