‘Very active and intense discussion going on between India, US at this time’: Jaishankar

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India and the US had a “very open discussion” on trade and the result of that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump agreed to conclude bilateral trade agreement by fall this year.

In conversation with Kyung-wha Kang of Asia Society in Delhi on Wednesday, Jaishankar mentioned that there has been a “very active and intense trade discussion” between India and the US at this point and recalled the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal’s visit to the US in February.

#WATCH | Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar says “When Prime Minister Modi went to Washington in February, the discussions that he had with President Trump, overall our assessment was that we saw many changes which suited us and in some ways formed a convergence on… pic.twitter.com/hOY9FrJMIa

— ANI (@ANI) March 26, 2025

Asked about trade agreements between India and US, Jaisahnkar responded, “When we went to Washington in February when Prime Minister went and the discussions that he had with President Trump, I think overall our assessment was that we saw many changes which suited us or which in some ways formed a convergence on which we could build upon. Let me give you a few examples. Let’s take defence. We saw a president who was much more open and much more active in terms of building a security defence partnership and much more forthcoming about American technology possibilities.”

Notably, India and the US are gearing up to negotiate a landmark Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) that could potentially boost trade between the two nations amid US President Donald Trump’s plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on US trading partners, including India.

#WATCH | Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar says “I know you call the Asia Society, but that doesn’t mean all of Asia has a similar position. I think within Asia, there are very diverse, very complex set of reactions…In many ways, a lot of what is driving the… pic.twitter.com/av0gXoq1NK

— ANI (@ANI) March 26, 2025

“Our own experience in the first term, in his first term was that he personally took an interest in ensuring that some of the platforms which we had an interest in, which we wanted, which were sort of meandering their way somewhere through American bureaucracy, that he stepped in and made sure that this happened. This time around he we suddenly heard a recognition. that you know there has to be a better way of engaging partners if there are countries who respect and recognise the value of American technology and want to acquire it and they should there should be easier pathways than the current one. So, we certainly expect a more substantial level higher quality defence relationship as a result,” he added.

US President Donald Trump had earlier targeted India’s import duties in a speech to a joint session of Congress. Trump specifically targeted India’s tariffs on automobile imports, saying, “India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100%.”

While addressing a joint session of the US Congress, Trump said that the reciprocal tax will kick in on April 2. He had said that the US has been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth and vowed not to “let that happen any longer.”

Jaishankar said that India started importing LNG from the US some decades ago and noted that the business stayed at a certain level. He expressed India’s interest in increasing LNG imports from the US. He said that the two nations had a good discussion on the tech world and called success of BigTech essential to make America great again

S Jaishankar said, “A second area of interest for us was energy, for a country like India which is whose imports are overwhelming, how to make sure that there’s a stable, reasonable, predictable energy environment is something which is crucial for our long term growth and development. Now we saw a president who clearly had an interest in ensuring that energy availability was more, energy flows were more diverse, that countries like India could have more choice than we currently do. We, you know, had some decades ago, started, well about a decade ago, started importing LNG from the US, but for various reasons, the, the business stayed at a certain level. We have interest in increasing it because you know the US is a very, very stable supplier. So, we found from the energy perspective a very positive administration. I would also we had a good discussion on the tech world. I think there was a recognition that because, you know, big tech is today.”

“The success of BigTech is essential to make America great again. There is a connection between the two and I think Big tech recognises the importance of mobility and talent flows and the importance of partnerships because obviously everything in the tech world can’t happen in America. So, how do you create reliable supply chains? How do you have trusted vendors, trusted partners, transparent partners? I think these were issues on which again we saw a great deal of understanding and positivity. On trade, we had a very open discussion and the result of that discussion was that the Prime Minister and the President agreed that we would conclude you rightly said not a free trade agreement but a bilateral trade agreement by fall this year. And that is what is currently under discussion. We have a team here, by the way, they’re not it’s not that they are kicking off the discussion. My colleague, the trade minister, the commerce minister was in the US last month, and since then actually we’ve been working the trade account through virtual means. So, there’s a very active and intense trade discussion going on at this point of time,” he added.

On India’s decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Jaishankar said, “So this brings me to the trade part of what you asked. Look, we did not sign RCEP for this reason. We through the RCEP discussions, we continuously sought protections and safeguards because we had apprehensions about a surge of imports essentially spurred by non-market and subsidy support. We didn’t get it, the RCEP partners did not take our concerns seriously. And at the end of the day, finally, forgive my saying it, presented us with a take it or leave it situation. And we left it, so and I think today if you ask people at that time when we did it, perhaps opinions were a bit more divided today, I think there’s a much stronger consensus that not joining RCEP for a country like India was a wise decision because see the nature of RCEP.|

“RCEP is a supply chain architecture system, where rules of origin have very limited meaning, I mean they can’t be verified in the way in which it used to be before. So, the way the flows would come at us, I mean already we are today struggling with some very serious adverse trade balances. There are deep concerns in this country about the hollowing out of our industrial capacity. We believe that we’re getting again a lot of unfair competition out of economies east of India. So, for the sake of diplomacy, I will not take names and I think all these were factors into our thinking,” he added. (ANI)