A team of US government officials will visit India from Tuesday ahead of President Donald Trump's April 2 tariff deadline as talks for a bilateral trade agreement gather steam.
A team, led by Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch, will visit India from March 25–29 for "meetings with Indian interlocutors as part of ongoing bilateral trade discussions", according to the US Embassy in India.
"This visit reflects the United States' continued commitment to advancing a productive and balanced trade relationship with India," it said in a statement on Monday. "We value our ongoing engagement with the Government of India on trade and investment matters and look forward to continuing these discussions in a constructive, equitable and forward-looking manner."
Lynch's visit comes on the heels of the April 2 reciprocal-tariff-imposition deadline, one that has been repeatedly used as a threat by Trump while asking trading partners like India to reduce tariffs on a variety of American products.
Apart from tariffs, a potential bilateral trade agreement between India and the US made its way to the joint statement issued following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Trump in February. As part of the BTA, the two nations have agreed to boost trade to $500 billion by 2030.
The trade deal will also entail deeper market access to India for US companies, and also tariff concessions on both sides. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has stated that India should open up its agricultural market, a sector it has so far remained protectionist of, given that the country is a very large agrarian economy.
"It just can't stay closed... Indian market for agriculture has to open up... How you do that and the scale by which you do that, may be, do quotas, may be do limits. You can be smarter when you have your most important trading partner on the other side of the table," Lutnick had remarked at an event.
Trump has also revealed that India signaled its readiness to make deeper tariff cuts, after he ramped up pressure on the country to lower trade barriers that he deems "unfair".
India and the US will be involved in talks till September to iron out the first tranche or phase of the BTA.
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