WASHINGTON: The United States and India are on the verge of sealing a trade agreement that will look markedly different from every trade arrangement the two countries have negotiated before, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, suggesting that months of halting talks could soon produce a breakthrough.
Speaking to reporters inside the Oval Office on October 20, Trump was asked where the negotiations stood. He replied that both governments wanted an accord and that the finish line was near. "They want to make a deal. We're going to make a deal. Pretty close, yeah," the president said.
Asked to elaborate, Trump added a cryptic flourish. "It's going to be a much different kind of deal than we've done," he said, without explaining how the new arrangement would differ from earlier pacts between New Delhi and Washington.
The president's remarks are his most upbeat public assessment of the talks in recent months, and they come at a moment when the diplomatic machinery on both sides appears to be in motion. His comments coincided with a visit to India by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who held talks aimed at strengthening cooperation across trade, energy, technology, defence and people-to-people ties.
In Mumbai on Tuesday, Rubio echoed the White House's optimism. "The State Department doesn't negotiate trade agreements, but we are very much involved in what's happening," he said, adding that only a few sticking points remained before the deal could be concluded.
"We're very, very close. I would say we're about as close as you can be without having executed the agreement. I think there's a small number of items left to wrap up, so I think that will happen shortly," Rubio said.
During the visit, Rubio also met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in New Delhi for discussions on the broader bilateral relationship, with trade featuring prominently alongside energy and defence cooperation.
The trade negotiations have been underway for more than a year. In February, the two sides announced that they had finalised a framework for the first phase of a bilateral trade agreement (BTA), raising hopes that a full pact would be signed within months.
Those expectations were soon overtaken by events. The Trump administration moved to impose punishingly high tariffs on Indian exports, with the levy reaching 50 per cent — including a 25 per cent surcharge linked to New Delhi's continued purchases of Russian oil, according to earlier reports.
The move hit Indian exporters hard, from textile manufacturers to gem and jewellery traders, and introduced a new strain into a relationship that both governments otherwise describe as strategic.
The Russian oil question has remained a recurring irritant. Trump has repeatedly claimed that New Delhi has scaled back its crude purchases from Moscow substantially — a claim Indian officials have not publicly confirmed, maintaining instead that energy imports are guided by national interest and economic needs. India has pointed out that Russian crude forms only a portion of its overall energy imports.
Despite the tariff friction, the negotiating track was never fully abandoned. Earlier this month, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal travelled to the United States for meetings with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Milwaukee and Washington, where the two sides went over the finer details of the proposed pact.
Back home, Goyal has described the talks as moving in the right direction, while cautioning that many sensitive and serious issues remain on the table. The two sides have held several rounds of formal talks since March, with negotiators continuing to meet between rounds.
For India, the stakes are especially high. The United States is among the largest destinations for Indian goods — including pharmaceuticals, textiles, machinery, gems and jewellery, and information-technology services — and exporters have spent months grappling with the uncertainty created by the tariff escalations.
Indian industry groups have argued that clarity on tariffs matters more than speed, and that any durable agreement must protect labour-intensive sectors such as apparel, leather and handicrafts, which employ millions.
For the United States, the deal forms part of a broader effort to redraw supply chains and deepen economic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. India, with its large domestic market, expanding manufacturing base and fast-growing middle class, is seen in Washington as a natural partner in that effort — and as a strategic counterweight in the region's economic landscape.
What exactly Trump meant by calling the deal "much different" remains open to interpretation. He offered no details, and neither the White House nor the Indian government immediately spelled out how the arrangement would depart from earlier trade frameworks.
Trade specialists note that the phrasing could point to a broader pact reaching beyond tariff schedules into areas such as energy trade, defence procurement, digital trade and investment flows — though that remains speculation for now.
The remarks also fit a long-running theme of Trump's presidency: the insistence that past American trade agreements were unfair to US workers. In that framing, a "different" deal with India would presumably aim to narrow the goods trade imbalance that has historically favoured India, alongside opening Indian markets further to American farm produce, energy and technology.
Reaching that outcome will not be simple. Issues that have historically complicated India-US trade negotiations — market access for agriculture and dairy, digital services taxation, intellectual property protections and non-tariff barriers — are widely expected to feature again in the endgame. Neither side has put a timetable on the conclusion, and officials on both sides have repeatedly stressed that the remaining items, however few, are the most delicate.
The last year has shown how quickly optimism can fade. Multiple rounds of talks and high-level visits have produced confident statements before, only for negotiations to stall over the same structural disagreements. Whether this time proves different will depend on whether the political will evident on Tuesday survives contact with the technical details.
For now, though, the language from both sides is unusually upbeat. With the US Secretary of State speaking of "a small number of items left to wrap up" and the president himself saying the two countries are "pretty close," negotiators on both sides will be under pressure to convert rhetoric into signed text — and to do so before the current momentum fades.
Beyond the substance, the political signalling itself carries weight. When a US president personally vouches for a deal's imminence, it usually means the outstanding technical disputes have been narrowed to a list that is politically manageable — though Trump's negotiating style has always blended public optimism with last-minute pressure.
New Delhi, for its part, has kept its public comments deliberately restrained, consistent with its practice of not negotiating through the media and with the lesson of earlier rounds, when premature optimism gave way to renewed disagreement.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, Times Now and agency reports.)