India-US trade pact to be finalised once US offers preferential rate: Goyal

NEW DELHI: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said the details of the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) with the US will be announced once Washington offers preferential terms compared to the country's competitors.

He also said that India's nine free trade agreements (FTAs), spanning economies representing about USD 60 trillion of GDP, would provide preferential access to nearly two-thirds of global trade.

He said the other FTAs that India would conclude over the next few months and couple of years, including those with Canada, Mexico, Chile, Mercosur, SACU (South Africa Customs Union), GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and Israel, together with efforts to review ASEAN, Korea and Japan trade deals would give India access to 75 per cent of global trade at a rate lower than its competitors.

India has implemented trade pacts with the UK, Mauritius, Oman, UAE, and Australia.

"(Trade pact with) New Zealand will get live soon and thereafter (FTA with) EU, the 27-nation bloc, will get live. And as soon as the US is able to give us the preferential rate, in comparison to our competition, we will finalise the BTA and announce the final details," he said at a workshop on free trade agreements, organised by the commerce ministry.

In February, India and the US announced finalisation of the framework for the first phase of the pact, but changes in the tariff landscape in the US have led to further negotiations between the two countries on the pact.

The US has imposed an additional 10 per cent tariff on a number of countries, including India, from July 24.

Goyal will visit the US in late September to attend the G-20 Trade Ministerial in Milwaukee and hold bilateral talks with USTR Jamieson Greer, with trade pact issues to figure in the discussions.

The two-day ministerial will begin on September 30. The United States holds the 2026 G20 presidency.

Countries including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia are major competitors of India in the US market.

Tariff advantage vis-a-vis these nations will give price competitiveness to Indian goods in the American market.

India exported goods worth about USD 87 billion to the US in 2025-26.

Addressing the National Workshop on 'Leveraging FTAs an Outreach Programme' here, Goyal called for a focused, inclusive and nationwide effort to maximise the utilisation of FTAs to expand India's trade across the world and ensure that the benefits of enhanced market access reach businesses across the country.

The day-long workshop brought together senior officials from the central government, states and Union Territories, Export Promotion Councils and industry associations, with the objective of translating India's expanding network of agreements into measurable outcomes for exporters, particularly MSMEs and first-time exporters.

The absolute tariff number was immaterial and had to be considered in relation to the competition, he added.

Giving the example of the textile industry, Goyal said India had for years faced difficulty competing with Bangladesh and Vietnam, which benefited from LDC (least developed countries) status and FTAs respectively, enabling them to access developed markets at zero or lower duties, while India faced higher duties.

The situation has now changed, with India securing rates better than those of competing geographies in almost all developed markets, he said.

He asked the industry to focus on scale, quality, maintaining customer trust and timely delivery of orders as "the ball is now entirely in our court".

Goyal said India has set a USD 1 trillion export target for the current year. Exports during the first four months of the current year had reached about USD 317 billion, compared with USD 280 billion during April-July last year.

He said the current trend was a good sign and emphasised the need to sustain the growth.

He added that wherever the Strait of Hormuz causes a problem, ways should be found to support small exporters particularly.

By 2030, four years from now, he said, India should aspire to meet the USD 2 trillion target that had been set many years ago.

Goyal added that exporters would be given priority support for the coming 100 BHAVYA industrial parks.

Concessions would be given to exporters for allocation to those who committed to higher levels, he said, adding that facilities needed by exporters for plug-and-play operations would be brought in.

He said every state should identify products and clusters where FTAs were already benefiting businesses and where benefits remained underutilised, so that the government could assess what support could be provided.

He said e-commerce offered MSMEs and first-time exporters a lower-barrier route to enter international markets and that changes had been made to encourage e-commerce to begin exporting on a large scale.

Addressing the gathering, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal said that exporters should take advantage of these deals as they provide huge opportunities.

But "we need to keep in mind that the window of opportunity that is opening before us through this FTA is not for an infinite period of time," he said and added that India's competitors, at some point in time, will also do trade pacts and they will also get similar benefits in that market.

"So we need to use the time effectively because if we miss the time window, then maybe we will miss the opportunity," he said.

India trades in about 12,300 tariff lines or product categories, and most of these lines are touched in some way or other by India's trade pacts.

"One of the key features of all these markets that have been opened up is also that the quality thresholds will be higher in these markets. If we have to actually leverage European Union market, UK market, the quality thresholds are going to be higher," Agarwal said.

He emphasised the need to use this time window of 5 to 10 years to actually create new supply chains and translate these FTAs into action. Without quality, it will be very difficult to access these markets in the long run, he said, adding that states should support exporters and industry.