Missed signals, lost deal: How India-US trade talks collapsed

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Source: Reuters

Exclusive-Missed signals, lost deal: How India-US trade talks collapsed

Manoj Kumar, Trevor Hunnicutt and Aftab Ahmed
Wed, August 6, 2025 at 12:07 AM EDT
5 min read

NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -After five rounds of trade negotiations, Indian officials were so confident of securing a favourable deal with the United States that they even signalled to the media that tariffs could be capped at 15%.

Indian officials expected U.S. President Donald Trump to announce the deal himself weeks before the August 1 deadline. The announcement never came.

New Delhi is now left with the surprise imposition of a 25% tariff on Indian goods from Friday, along with unspecified penalties over oil imports from Russia, while Trump has closed larger deals with Japan and the EU, and even offered better terms to arch-rival Pakistan.

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The officials on both sides said a mix of political misjudgment, missed signals and bitterness broke down the deal between the world's biggest and fifth-largest economies, whose bilateral trade is worth over $190 billion.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/exclusive-missed-signals-lost-deal-040757342.html