US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this morning that President Donald Trump’s administration is close to a trade deal with India, though he avoided answering several questions asking him to provide a timeline for an announcement, NBC News reported.
“I think we’re very close to a deal with India,” Bessent said at a White House briefing. “India, oddly enough, is easier to negotiate with than a lot of other countries because they have very high tariffs and a lot of tariffs. So it’s much easier to resist direct tariffs.”
He said India and other Asian countries have been “the most willing” to negotiate trade deals with the Trump administration.
“President Trump is creating what I would call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations. So he’s more concerned about getting the best trade deals possible. I think the gap of uncertainty will narrow and when we start moving forward with announcing deals then there will be certainty, but of course that is not necessarily a good thing in negotiations,” he added.