The Indian government has confirmed that Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has held two days of intensive talks with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in New Delhi to chart a definitive path towards the signing of an interim Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). The diplomatic mission is being deployed to revive the transatlantic commercial ties between the two countries following the four-way meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump at the G7 Summit last week.
Under the draft basic framework being discussed, New Delhi is aggressively demanding “tariff priority” status to ensure that domestically produced corporate goods have a macro cost advantage in the American market over other regional producers. This customs security guarantee is considered very critical to maintain the momentum of India’s exports to the US which are reported to have recorded a marginal growth of $17.29 billion in the April-May 2026 period.
However, the trade negotiators in New Delhi have been dealt a major blow after the structure of the “February Agreement” was nullified due to domestic judicial restrictions in Washington. The US Supreme Court's decision to declare Trump's unilateral global tariffs invalid directly erases America's original offer to reduce import duties on Indian goods from 25% to 18%.
Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), revealed in a recent report that the original bargain structure offered by the US side no longer exists legally. Instead, the USTR Office has been found to have started manipulating the Section 301 investigation instrument on global forced labor and textile capacity dumping to maintain their negotiating leverage in South Asia.
Despite the threat of an additional 12.5% tax bill proposed by Greer on 54 world economies earlier this month, India's Commerce Ministry stressed that both sides remain committed to producing a balanced and commercially meaningful trade law. After concluding their working visit in New Delhi, the US trade delegation is scheduled to fly to Uzbekistan for a strategic meeting with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
