HYDERABAD: India said “significant progress” has been made in reaching a long-awaited trade agreement with the United States (US).
This was one of the issues Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump discussed during their meeting on the margins of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Evian, France, on Wednesday.
“The leaders noted with particular satisfaction the significant progress made in negotiations towards an interim Bilateral Trade Agreement and instructed their officials to work towards a balanced, mutually beneficial, and commercially meaningful agreement at the earliest,” India’s External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will be visiting India next week in this connection, it said.
Trump, in response to a question about the ongoing trade talks, called Modi a “tough” negotiator.
“We have been there for a little while and he is a very tough negotiator, one of the toughest, actually,” Trump said, pointing towards the Indian leader.
Modi looks like “an angel” but he is “as tough as a killer,” the US president remarked.
The US and India agreed on an interim trade agreement in February this year under which the US reduced tariffs to 18 per cent.
Trump in 2025 imposed 25 per cent tariffs on India and an additional 25 per cent penalty for buying Russian oil.
— BERNAMA
