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Informist, Sunday, May 24, 2026

NEW DELHI – The bilateral relations between India and the US have not lost momentum and the trade deal under negotiations between the two countries may be sealed soon, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday after a meeting with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. Rubio said a US trade delegation will visit India "very soon" to take forward the talks on the matter.

"We've made tremendous progress, and I think we're going to wind up with a trade agreement," Rubio said in response to a media query at a joint press conference with Jaishankar. The agreement, he said, was going to be "enduring, beneficial to both sides, and sustainable in a way that addresses national interests that we have".

Rubio argued that President Donald Trump's tariff policies are not meant to "create friction" with India, but to recalibrate the balance of trade with all the countries. "The president said we have to rebalance US trade. This is not about India," he said.

Elaborating further, he said, "This is about the US in terms of trade. The president did not say, ‘Let's figure out a way to create friction with India over trade'. The President came in and said, ‘We have a trade situation involving the US economy that doesn't work moving forward'."

The US Secretary of State underlined that India was one of the "most important strategic partners" of his country. In response to another query about the White House warming up to Pakistan and its military establishment, Rubio said, "We have relations and we work at tactical level and in many other ways with countries all over the world. So does India. That's what responsible nation states do."

"I don't view our relations with any other country coming at the expense of our strategic relations with India," he said. Rubio arrived Saturday on a four-day visit to India to take part in the Quad foreign affairs ministers' meeting. The US, India, Australia, and Japan are the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue--commonly known as the Quad--which is an Indo-Pacific strategic alliance.  End

Reported by Asim Khan

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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