India and the US have concluded the fifth round of talks for the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA) in Washington. Both sides are looking at finalising an interim trade deal before August 1. Issues related to agriculture and automobiles figured during the negotiations.
'What the US appears to be doing is to force India to be "the buyer of last resort", on whom their products can be dumped, 1.4 billion people have to eat something, so why not eat American corn?' 'What is exercising the Trump lot is the fact that most of the farms are in solidly Republican Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
United States President Donald Trump said a 'very big' trade deal is on cards with India, hinting at significant progress in the negotiation process of a long-awaited bilateral trade agreement between the two countries.
Digipin promises to revolutionise location-based services in India with safeguards.
100-day agenda: Commerce ministry pushes for separate logistics department
Hectic parleys are underway between officials of India and the US in Washington on the proposed interim trade agreement between the two countries, an official said on Wednesday.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will lead a team of senior Indian officials to Washington starting May 16 for discussions with their US counterparts on the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA), an official said on Tuesday. Goyal is expected to hold meetings with US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer and US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during his visit.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he "helped settle" the tensions between India and Pakistan and that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America would do a "lot of trade" with them if they stopped the conflict.
The government has set up an inter-ministerial group to monitor a possible surge in imports from countries like China, Vietnam and Thailand, fearing a surge in inbound shipments following the imposition of high reciprocal tariffs by the US on these countries, sources said. The product categories that may see an upsurge in diversion of imports from the US to India include consumer goods, electronics, chemicals and steel.
US President Donald Trump has announced a 25 per cent plus tariff on India from Aug 1. Trump, describing India as a "friend", said the US has done relatively "little business" with the country because of its high tariffs.
India's trade deficit with China neared $100 billion in FY25, amid escalating concerns of dumping, data released by the commerce department on Wednesday showed. Chinese imports rose by 11.5 per cent to $113.45 billion, while outbound shipments to the neighbouring country saw 14.5 per cent contraction to $14.2 billion.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor welcomed the revival of long-stalled India-UK FTA negotiations, posting a selfie with Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and the UK's Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds. Tharoor's post comes amid a row over his recent article praising the Kerala government's investment climate, which drew criticism from some Congress leaders.
A government official said India and the US are exploring an interim trade deal within 90 days.
India and the US desire to give preferential market access to each other's businesses and teams of both the countries are working together on the proposed bilateral trade agreement, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has said. In February, US President Donald J Trump and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi announced plans to negotiate the first tranche or phase of a mutually beneficial, multi-sector Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) by fall (September-October) of 2025.
Indian and US officials will begin deliberations on the proposed bilateral trade agreement in Washington from Wednesday with an aim to iron out issues and give an impetus to the negotiations.
Isaacman's removal comes just days after Elon Musk's official departure from the White House, where the SpaceX CEO was serving in the role of a "special government employee" leading the Department of Government Efficiency.
He had promised his daughter that he would be there, come what may, a kin said. But fate had a different plan.
Senior officials of India and the US will begin three-day talks on the proposed bilateral trade agreement in New Delhi on Wednesday amid threats of reciprocal tariffs from the Trump-administration, an official said. To formally start the negotiations on the pact, Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch, along with a team of officials, is in New Delhi.
As in-person negotiations between India and the US kickstarted on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expected India to strike the first bilateral trade deal to avert President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs.
A team of senior officials from India will again visit Washington this month to hold discussions with their US counterparts on the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA), government sources said on Thursday. To give impetus to the talks, India's chief negotiator Rajesh Agrawal, special secretary in the Department of Commerce, and Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch had last month held three-day talks in Washington.
The Indian government has appointed Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Pandey, a 1987-batch IAS officer, will replace Madhabi Puri Buch, whose three-year tenure ends on February 28. Pandey's appointment comes at a time when the markets are experiencing bear pressure due to withdrawals by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). Pandey has extensive experience in the finance ministry, having served as the longest-serving secretary in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE). He also played a key role in the framing of the 2025-26 Budget and the drafting of the new Income Tax Bill. Pandey's appointment is for an initial period of three years.
The government is targeting export of goods and services worth $2 trillion by 2030.
An Indian official team is likely to visit Washington next week to iron out differences on certain issues before formally launching negotiations for the proposed India-US bilateral trade agreement (BTA), an official said. The visit, which comes within weeks of a high-level US team visiting India, indicates that the talks for the BTA are gaining momentum.
The move by the US President came following a retaliatory move by China, where it increased its tariff on US goods from 34 per cent to 84 per cent starting April 10.
Smartphones, for the first time, emerged as India's largest individual export commodity by value over 10 months of any financial year, during the April-January period of FY25, based on harmonised system (HS) codes. During the period under review, smartphone exports from India reached $18.31 billion, according to data from the Department of Commerce, surpassing automotive diesel fuel exports, which stood at $16.04 billion.
Seasoned bureaucrat and a stickler for rules Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey will be at the helm of capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), for three years. The 1987-batch Odisha-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Pandey, would replace Madhabi Puri Buch, whose three-year term ends on Friday.
Starlink's application for offering satcom services in India had been held up for the company's inability to comply with mandatory ownership disclosure norms.
We have entered a new era in human history, asserts Aakar Patel.
Companies have been approached to set up incubation centres that will offer financial and non-financial support to manufacturing startups at various levels.
India and the US will sit together in the next couple of weeks to decide on the nature of the proposed trade agreement and finalise its broad contours, a senior official said on Monday. During the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington, India and the US announced to more than double the two-way commerce to $500 billion by 2030 and negotiate the first tranche of a mutually beneficial, multi-sector bilateral trade agreement (BTA) by fall of 2025.
Ahead of the visit, officials from key government departments held intense discussions to identify key trade-related proposals.
In a dramatic shift in Canada's foreign policy, Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday declared that the long-standing economic and security relationship between Canada and the United States has ended, responding to US President Donald Trump's announcement of new auto tariffs that could severely impact Canada's economy, Politico reported.
I'...additional concessions, such as opening government procurement, reducing agricultural subsidies, weakening patent protections, and allowing unrestricted data flows -- demands India has resisted for decades.'
The government is at a "fairly advanced stage" of finalising a well-coordinated e-commerce policy and consumer protection rules, which will incorporate provisions of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on Thursday. "E-commerce rules and e-commerce policy will be congruent with each other... That exercise is at a fairly advanced stage," Singh told reporters. The remarks come on a day the number of daily transactions on the platform has gone up 500 times since the beginning of this year with the number of retail merchants added to its roster growing 40-fold.
This will be the first full-year Budget of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government since it came to power for a third consecutive term in July last year.
Apple will source the majority of the iPhone sold in the US from India in the June quarter while China will produce the vast majority of the devices for other markets amid uncertainty over tax tariffs, a top official said on Friday.
The Indian industry is paranoid about the USA's plan to impose reciprocal tariffs and wants early conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement, sources said on Wednesday. They said that the talks for the proposed bilateral trade agreement are going well.
India on Monday imposed a 12 per cent provisional safeguard duty for 200 days on five steel product categories, including hot rolled coils, sheets and plates, to protect domestic players from surge in imports. The decision follows a recommendation for the same by the Commerce Ministry's investigation arm DGTR. Last month, the DGTR suggested to impose the duty.
While India has become the largest data generating nation, and hosts more than 152 data centres, it is fed by only 18 undersea cables.
Many industry executives have said the draft e-commerce policy is being perceived as nationalistic but not overly protectionist and it is providing preference to Indian players against foreign companies. This might have an impact on investment by large players such as Walmart and Amazon in the country, said the executives. They said e-commerce was a very small portion of the retail industry and at a nascent stage and did not require heavy hammer regulations. Though the policy talks about being equally applicable to foreign and domestic players, it mentions that foreign direct investment (FDI) takes precedence over the e-commerce policy in any area of overlap.
