India-US Trade Talks Hit ‘Plateau’, Says Sitharaman
India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that India-US trade talks have reached a “plateau”, with further give-and-take “very, very difficult” for both sides.
Speaking at the Munich Leaders Meeting in New Delhi, Sitharaman said the talks were still under way but that both countries may have reached the limits of what they can offer each other.
“The agreement negotiations are still ongoing, although we’d like to believe that both the sides have reached a plateau beyond which giving or taking might be very, very difficult. But maybe if there are rooms to operate from, both sides would do it,” she said.
India-US trade talks hinge on the trade balance
Sitharaman said the agreement was being “hard and very rigorously negotiated”. The central sticking point, she said, is the trade balance, which she described as “very much in our favour”. Washington, she added, naturally wants to narrow the gap and address what it sees as losses built up over the years.
Several rounds of talks have taken place since the two countries agreed a framework for an interim trade agreement in February. The process was complicated when the US Supreme Court struck down the legal basis of the preferential tariff mechanism Washington had offered, and by a US probe into unfair trade practices against multiple countries, including India. Both sides are now working to conclude an interim bilateral trade agreement.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to US President Donald Trump on September 30, in what Modi called a “productive conversation” covering trade, defence, energy and critical technologies. Commerce minister Piyush Goyal also met US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the sidelines of the G20 trade ministers’ meeting in Milwaukee. Greer had said last week that an agreement was not imminent.
The India-EU deal as a contrast
Sitharaman pointed to India’s trade pact with the European Union as an example of how New Delhi approaches market access. She said India had opened 92.5 per cent of its tariff lines and about 97 per cent of tariff value, while the EU had opened 99 per cent in value terms. The deal covers economies of around two billion people and roughly a quarter of global GDP, and was described by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the “mother of all deals”.
On whether India’s purchases of Russian oil had become a friction point with European partners, Sitharaman said she was not aware of any European counterpart to the US “Lindsey Graham bill” that could shape talks with the EU. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, signed by Trump on September 18, gives the US president powers to impose targeted tariffs of up to 100 per cent on major buyers of Russian oil.
What did Sitharaman say about the India-US trade talks?
She said the negotiations have reached a “plateau” beyond which further concessions would be “very, very difficult”, though talks are still ongoing.
Why are the talks stuck?
The main hurdle is the trade imbalance, which favours India, along with legal complications after the US Supreme Court struck down the tariff mechanism Washington had offered.
What happens next?
Both sides are working to conclude an interim bilateral trade agreement, and Sitharaman said any remaining room for compromise would be used.
