External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said, India and the US are holding very active and intense discussions on trade. He added that New Delhi is also looking at boosting its energy ties with the US and making sure that there’s a stable, reasonable, predictable energy environment that is something crucial to India’s long-term growth and development. In an interactive session hosted by think-tank Asia Society in New Delhi yesterday, Dr. S Jaishankar said that on trade, they had a very open discussion and it is the result of the decision by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Trump to have a bilateral trade agreement by fall this year.
Brendan Lynch, the assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asia, is currently on a five-day visit to India from Tuesday. On strategic ties with the US, Dr. S Jaishankar said, New Delhi is certainly expecting a more substantial and higher quality defence relationship under the Trump administration. He also talked about India’s ongoing discussions for separate free trade pacts with the European Union and the United Kingdom. He said, these agreements are very serious and they are quite advanced. The US was the largest trading partner of India with overall bilateral trade in goods and services amounting to 190 billion dollars for calendar year 2023. In the financial year 2023-24, the US was the third largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) into India with inflows of 4.99 billion dollars.