India\u2019s trade pact with the United States was delayed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not make a telephone call to US President Donald Trump to close a deal they were negotiating, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Friday.<\/p>\n
The trade talks fell apart last year and Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods in August to 50 per cent, the world\u2019s highest rate, including a levy of 25pc in retaliation for India\u2019s purchases of Russian oil.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all set up and you have got to have Modi call the president. And they were uncomfortable doing it,\u201d Lutnick said in an interview on the All-In podcast, a US show by four venture capitalists that focuses on business and technology. \u201cSo Modi didn\u2019t call.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments came after Trump stepped up the pressure for talks with a warning this week that tariffs could rise further unless India curbs its Russian oil imports.<\/p>\n
That step pushed the Indian rupee to a record low and spooked investors waiting for progress in two-way negotiations for a trade deal that remains elusive.<\/p>\n
India still seeks a tariff rate between Washington\u2019s offers to Britain and Vietnam that had formerly been agreed but the offer has expired, Lutnick added.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s trade ministry did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment on Lutnick\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n
New Delhi and Washington were very close to a trade deal last year but a communication breakdown led to the collapse of any potential pact, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
It cited an Indian government official involved in the talks as saying that Modi could not have called Trump, for fear that a one-sided conversation would put him on the spot.<\/p>\n
\u2018Not accurate\u2019
\nHowever, India said on Friday that Lutnick\u2019s remarks were \u201cnot accurate\u201d and did not reflect the discussions between Delhi and Washington, reported the BBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia and the US were committed to negotiating a bilateral trade agreement as far back as 13 February last year. Since then, both sides have held multiple rounds of negotiations to arrive at a balanced and mutually beneficial trade agreement. On several occasions, we have been close to a deal,\u201d said foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added that the Indian prime minister had spoken with the US president eight times on the phone in 2025, \u201ccovering different aspects of our wide-ranging partnership\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s trade pact with the United States was delayed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not make a telephone call to US President Donald Trump to close a deal they were negotiating, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Friday. The trade talks fell apart last year and Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods in August […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15064,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15062\/revisions\/15064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}