In a notable development, a 12-member team from India is set to lead three-day talks with the US authorities from April 20 where both sides are expected to finalise and re-calibrate certain details around the first phase of the much-stroked India-USA bilateral trade agreement (BTA), news agency PTI reported.
Led by Darpan Jain, Additional Secretary in the Department of Commerce, the team has been reportedly tasked with redrafting a deal that has been upended by recent changes to US tariff regime and recent shifts in India’s trading hierarchy.
Following the decision of the US Supreme Court against the sweeping tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on several countries, a stream of nations including India are set to re-work their previously agreed upon trade agreements with Washington.
After the Supreme Court’s decision that left a major impact on international trade, the Trump administration imposed a 10 per cent tariff on all countries from February 24 for 150 days. In light of these changes, a meeting between chief negotiators of India and the US scheduled in February was postponed.
India-US economic agenda: Tariffs, trade investigation and other discussion items
As per government officials interviewed by PTI, the primary objective of the Washington visit is to protect India’s “comparative advantage.” Under the initial February agreement, the US had agreed to slash tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18%. This included the removal of a 25% “penalty” tariff previously imposed due to India’s procurement of Russian oil.
According to the officials, one of the key appeals of the February deal was that the specially reduced tariffs gave India a cost-based advantage over other nations competing for the US market. According to the report, this competitive advantage was lost by India after the White House imposed a uniform 10% tariff on all trading partners starting February 24.
“The agreement will have to be recalibrated and redrafted,” a senior government official told PTI. “Since the agreement hasn’t been signed, we have the flexibility to change whatever is necessary to ensure India isn’t disadvantaged by this uniform tariff,” the official added.
What were the previously agreed terms
Under the previously agreed framework, India proposed to eliminate or reduce tariffs on all US industrial goods. Delhi had also made the commitment to eliminate non-tariff based trade restrictions and significantly reduce Indian tariffs on a wide range of US food and agricultural products.
These agricultural products included US dried distillers’ grains (DDGs), red sorghum for animal feed, tree nuts, fresh and processed fruit, soybean oil, wine and spirits and additional products.
Apart from reducing trade restrictions, in the previously agreed pact, India had also outlined a commitment to purchase USD 500 billion of US energy products, precious metals, raw materials for semiconductor Industry, aircraft parts and coking coal over the next five years.
However, given recent changes to the global trade landscape and the loss of India’s competitive advantage, a lot of these provisions stand to be altered, as per the PTI report.
USTR probe on Asian nations
Furthermore, another primary point of friction during the Washington talks will be two unilateral investigations launched by the US Trade Representative (USTR) under Section 301 of US trade law.
The USTR in March opened an investigation against several Asian countries like Thailand, Combodia, China and India arguing that these Asian nationals have built an “excessive” manufacturing capacity in multiple sectors that often leads to global overproduction and hurts US workers
India strongly rejected allegations made by the US Trade Representative in those two investigations under its Section 301 of trade law and has requested to terminate the probes as the initiation notice has failed to provide cogent rationale to substantiate the claims.
In another development that’s representative of India’s developing global trade relationships, China has overtaken the US to emerge as India’s largest trading partner in 2025-26. As per government data, the United States of America served as India’s largest trading partner for four consecutive years till 2024-25.
The country’s outbound shipments to the US grew marginally 0.92 per cent to USD 87.3 billion during the last fiscal year, while imports increased 15.95 per cent to USD 52.9 billion. The trade surplus declined to USD 34.4 billion in 2025-26 from USD 40.89 billion in 2024-25.
