Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday that a trade deal between India and the United States should be concluded as soon as possible, citing benefits for both bilateral commerce and the broader global trading environment. She also noted that the Commerce Minister had separately expressed a similar expectation about bringing the agreement to a formal conclusion in the near term.
Talks between the two parties have continued without resolution. Sitharaman voiced support for the broader goal of strengthening commercial ties between India and the United States, stating a desire to see the bilateral trade arrangement concluded at the earliest opportunity.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters on Thursday that legal drafting was under way on a text for the opening phase of a bilateral trade agreement between India and the United States.
Speaking at an Atlantic Council event held alongside the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, Sitharaman pointed to an expanding gap in bilateral trade flows between India and China, and to the continued difficulty Indian exporters face in gaining meaningful entry to Chinese markets — issues she described as unresolved despite extended dialogue with Beijing.
Sitharaman said that attempts over many years to open the Chinese market to Indian exports — among them generic pharmaceuticals, bovine meat, vegetables, and other perishable agricultural products — had yielded little tangible result. She attributed the impasse primarily to non-tariff restrictions, pointing to phytosanitary requirements and similar regulatory measures that, in her view, had persisted even where bilateral dialogue and technical review offered a path toward resolution.
Bilateral negotiations remained the preferred path for addressing substantial trade imbalances, she noted, rather than levying punitive tariffs against trading partners — a slower route, but one India had consistently chosen.
Addressing the BRICS grouping, Sitharaman described it as a vehicle for advancing the wellbeing of member populations rather than a mechanism directed against any nation or alliance, adding that opposing other parties had never been part of the forum's purpose. The goal, she noted, was deepening ties through the BRICS framework.
Pointing to BRICS membership spanning close to 40 per cent of the global population, Sitharaman put forward the view that deeper ties between those nations held the potential to strengthen trade flows, build cross-border understanding, and widen the range of economic openings available to their people. Membership growth had brought the total to between 11 and 12 actively engaged nations, whose combined share of worldwide trade stood at roughly 45 per cent, she noted.
Sitharaman pointed to data showing the Indian economy had maintained an expansion trajectory through a period of worldwide instability, ranking it among the top-performing large economies by growth rate across the four to five years that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. Broad-based growth, expanded access to resources, youth-focused skills programmes, disciplined public finances, and a stepped-up commitment to capital spending were the factors she cited when explaining the country's performance.
The finance minister put forward the position that directing public money into infrastructure tends to yield a wider economic return than distributing the same amount to households, pointing also to the role such spending plays in creating employment and supporting broader economic output. Public investment in infrastructure channels funds outward through the wider economy — reaching households and workers along the way, she contended — and tends to weigh less heavily on the fiscal balance than several alternative forms of spending would.
Sitharaman contended that government borrowing tracks closely with infrastructure spending, with debt-financed asset creation producing broader economic gains. She reinforced that position by noting that funds raised through borrowing flow into asset development, from which the wider economy draws benefit.
