India and the US have aimed to double bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a joint media briefing with US President Donald Trump in Washington DC on Thursday.
The two leaders also agreed to work on a bilateral trade agreement, establish the US as a leading supplier of oil & gas to India and expand US defence sales and co-production even as Trump’s reciprocal tariff plans threw a shadow on future prospects.
“Today, we have set a target of more than doubling bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. Our teams will work on an early conclusion of a mutually beneficial trade agreement. We will strengthen oil and gas trade to ensure India’s energy security… we also talked about increasing cooperation in the direction of small modular reactors,” Modi said at the briefing.
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Modi was in Washington DC on a two-day official visit where he met Trump face-to-face for the first time after he took charge as the US President on January 20 for a second non-consecutive term.
Trump complained that India did not give the US a concession on tariffs to establish balanced trade and he now wanted to do it the easy way by matching the country’s tariffs.
“There will be trade negotiations to address the long-running disparities that should have been addressed long ago, but they didn’t do that. We can make up the deficit very easily with the sale of oil and gas,” Trump stated.
India had a trade surplus of about $35 billion over the US in FY24. Against exports of goods worth $ 77.51 billion to the US, India’s imports were at $42.19 billion.
The US President pointed out that an agreement on energy had been reached that would hopefully make the country the top supplier to India. This was reinforced by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri who said there was a “good chance” that India’s energy sourcing from the US would increase from $15 billion to $25 billion.
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Plans were announced to finalise a new 10-year framework for the US-India major defence partnership in the 21st century.“Starting this year, we’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars,” Trump said. He also talked about plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to India, which some argue can affect India’s indigenous defence manufacturing push. But Indian officials said formal process has not started.
Investment in energy infrastructure will also increase focus on nuclear energy and the two countries also discussed increasing cooperation on small modular reactors, Modi said.