New Delhi: India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar Wednesday made the pitch for better ties between New Delhi and both the US and China during an interaction in the capital. Jaishankar asserted that a trade agreement between India and the US has “sound business” sense, while good ties with China is in our “mutual interest”.
“There is a sound business case for a bilateral trade agreement with the US. Bear in mind that in the first [Donald J.] Trump administration, our trade negotiators and theirs spent a lot of time actually trying to do a limited deal…A trade agreement with the US is conceptually not new,” said Jaishankar, while speaking at an event organised by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Asia Society India Centre. The discussion was moderated by Kyung-wha Kang, the President and CEO of the Asia Society and a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea.
Jaishankar, on the deal with the US, added: “There is a very active and intense trade discussion going on at this point in time.”
The US and India announced their intention to sign the “first tranche” of a bilateral trade agreement by the fall (autumn) of this year during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington D.C. last month. Negotiations were kicked off after the visit of Piyush Goyal, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, to the US earlier this month.
Currently a delegation led by the US Assistant Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch is in New Delhi between 25 March and 29 March to continue the negotiations of the deal. There is a looming threat of reciprocal tariffs, which have been announced by Trump. The reciprocal tariffs are expected to be imposed on 2 April.
It is likely that India, which has already cut tariffs on certain products like bourbon whiskey and electric vehicles in the 2025-2026 Union Budget, will cut further tariffs before the deadline date. These tariff cuts come as India is keen to show its interest in compromising over its tariff rates with the Trump administration. The US is India’s largest export market for goods. In 2023-2024, Indian exports to US in goods touched $77 billion.
However, while there exists a business case for such a deal, Jaishankar also highlighted that the discussions between Modi and Trump last month indicated an American President keen to deepen both defence and energy ties with India.
“We saw a President who was more open and much more active in building a security-defence partnership. [He] was much more forthcoming on American technology possibilities…We certainly expect a more substantial and higher quality defence relationship as a result,” said Jaishankar.
While the Indian External Affairs Minister was positive on the momentum of India-US ties, especially under President Trump, he made it clear that New Delhi’s long-standing defence partnership with Russia was a result of Washington backing away from military deals starting from 1965.
The Trump administration has urged India to stop purchasing Russian military equipment. Senior leaders including Trump himself, have publicly said the same. Jaishankar pointed out that it was the US, which in 1965 chose to “take itself out of the game” with regards to selling equipment to India, till at least 2005.
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‘Mutual interest’ says Jaishankar on good ties with China
Subsequently to the discussions on India-US ties, Jaishankar also touched upon how positive ties between New Delhi and Beijing would be “mutually beneficial”. The Indian External Affairs Minister, said that the clashes in Galwan were extremely “traumatic” to India-China ties.
“Differences should not become disputes and competition should not become conflict. We can differ on many issues, we do compete on many issues. But because we compete does not mean that there should be a conflict between us. We are very realistic about it,” said Jaishankar.
He added: “Right now, we feel that from October of last year, the relationship has seen some improvement. We are working on different aspects of it…What we are trying step by step, is to see if we could rebuild and undo some of the damage as a result of their actions in 2020…We genuinely, sincerely think that this is in our mutual interest.”
The Galwan clashes in the summer of 2020 led to a diplomatic and political chill between India and China. In October 2024, India first announced that the two sides agreed to disengage at friction points across the Line of Actual Control. Days after that agreement, Prime Minister Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
Since then, a number of high-level delegations have met, including Jaishankar with his counterpart Wang Yi. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has also held discussions with Wang, and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri led a delegation to Beijing in January of this year.
China has agreed to allow for the restart of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra this year, while India has in principle agreed to resume direct flights between the two countries, subject to approval of the necessary technicalities.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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