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Islamabad: India\u2019s trade pact with the United States was delayed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not make a telephone call to US President Donald Trump to close a deal they were negotiating, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said.<\/p>\n
According to Kashmir Media Service, the trade talks fell apart last year and Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods in August to 50 per cent, the world\u2019s highest rate, including a levy of 25pc in retaliation for India\u2019s purchases of Russian oil.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all set up and you have got to have Modi call the president. And they were uncomfortable doing it,\u201d Lutnick said in an interview on the All-In podcast, a US show by four venture capitalists that focuses on business and technology. \u201cSo Modi didn\u2019t call.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments came after Trump stepped up the pressure for talks with a warning this week that tariffs could rise further unless India curbs its Russian oil imports.<\/p>\n
That step pushed the Indian rupee to a record low and spooked investors waiting for progress in two-way negotiations for a trade deal that remains elusive.<\/p>\n
India still seeks a tariff rate between Washington\u2019s offers to Britain and Vietnam that had formerly been agreed but the offer has expired, Lutnick added.<\/p>\n
New Delhi and Washington were very close to a trade deal last year but a communication breakdown led to the collapse of any potential pact, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
It cited an Indian government official involved in the talks as saying that Modi could not have called Trump, for fear that a one-sided conversation would put him on the spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad: India\u2019s trade pact with the United States was delayed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not make a telephone call to US President Donald Trump to close a deal they were negotiating, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said. According to Kashmir Media Service, the trade talks fell apart last year and Trump doubled tariffs …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":192249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/01\/4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192250,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192248\/revisions\/192250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}