India-US ties ‘very substantial, consequential’, says Piyush Goyal amid uncertainty over trade deals | Today’s news
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday that India’s relations with the US are “very good” even as trade tensions have simmered since President Donald Trump said last year that he had helped broker an end to armed clashes with Pakistan.
“I don’t see any problem as we speak,” Goyal said at the New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Wednesday when asked if India’s relations with the US would improve under a different administration.
The forum is organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Read also | Piyush Goyal outlines 5 key pillars of the India-UK partnership
“The relationship that India has with the US is very substantial, it is very important for the world because they are two big democracies,” the minister was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
The remarks come as India and the US have struggled to seal a trade deal amid lengthy negotiations and after Trump’s punitive tariffs soured relations. Ties were further strained by the president’s comments on India’s brief armed conflict with Pakistan last year, which violated diplomatic norms.
The latest flashpoint with Washington comes after some of India’s biggest IT services firms, like Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Inc., from a longstanding immigration initiative to crackdown on alleged abuses of the H-1B visa system for workers.
Vice President JD Vance urged American firms to hire more American workers and “stop importing a servant to do a job that an American worker would be happy to do.”
The Indian government called the comments “deeply offensive”. Indentured servitude is associated in India with the colonial-era system in which laborers were forced to work on plantations and farms overseas under exploitative conditions.
India and the US proposed a trade agreement
India and the US have been in talks since early 2025 on a proposed trade pact to address tariff frictions, remove non-tariff barriers and strengthen bilateral market access.
India seeks better tariffs than its competitors for its goods in the US market.
Earlier this month US Sales Representative Jamieson Greer said the United States and India were working to finalize a bilateral trade deal, but that a deal was not in immediate danger. Greer said both sides have identified issues that remain unresolved and are working toward an agreement.
Goyal tried to allay fears that relations were once again on a downward trajectory.
Read also | Piyush Goyal says India will become a global hub for automobile manufacturing
“The United States and India have a very, very consistent relationship, and it’s only going to get better, regardless of changes in political thinking, either in India or in the U.S.,” he said. “The United States and India continue to have a very close relationship and we continue to work with them in many ways,” including in defense, working to ensure open supply chains in technology, goods and services.
Goyal on Indo-China ties
Goyal said India was trying to revive its relationship with China, adding that “the final word on this journey has not yet been written”.
Ties are beginning to thaw after a deadly clash on the India-China border in 2020 prompted Delhi to impose a wide range of restrictions on Chinese companies.
“We are open to all countries around the world as long as we get a fair deal, as long as we have continuity of engagement and as long as the geopolitical situation does not deteriorate,” Goyal said.
What Jaishankar said about the trade deal
On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said India and the United States continued to try to iron out differences on the proposed trade deal and talks were moving towards a “landing point”. The minister noted that the basic foundations of the bilateral strategic partnership remain unchanged.
The external affairs minister’s comments on the trade talks came more than a week after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said talks on a trade deal had reached a “plateau”.
“I think we are waiting for a few things. I would not be comfortable spilling the beans in public,” Jaishankar said on Tuesday evening when asked about the status of talks between the two sides.
“I don’t see any problem as we speak,” Piyush Goyal said of Indo-US relations.
“I feel this is an issue that is heading towards a tipping point,” Jaishankar said.
