Trump says U.S.-India trade deal is very close

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that tariff negotiations with India are “coming along great,” and he thinks the U.S. will strike a trade deal with the country.

“I think we’ll have a deal with India,” Trump said during brief remarks to reporters outside the White House. “The prime minister, as you know, was here three weeks ago, and they want to make a deal.” India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the White House in late February.

Trump’s comments come after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. was “very close on India.”

Speaking at a White House press briefing, Bessent said the administration has also held “substantial talks” with Japan over a possible trade deal, and that “the contours of a deal” with South Korea could be coming together.

Vice President JD Vance met last week with Modi. The two leaders “made some very good progress, so I could see some announcements on India,” Bessent said. He did not provide a specific timeline.

“A country like India, which has the posted and ready tariffs, it’s much easier to negotiate with them,” he added.

Raghuram Rajan, an economist and finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said “India benefits hugely if it can negotiate tariffs to a much lower level, even while some other countries have it at a higher level.”

“It may cause a lot of companies to look at India in a new light, especially given the large Indian domestic market,” Rajan said Tuesday on CNBC.

The White House has been working to secure trade deals with partners in the weeks since Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement.

“We have 18 important trading relationships, we will be speaking to all of those partners, or at least 17 of them, over the next few weeks. Many of them have already come to Washington,” Bessent said.

He said later during the briefing that trading relationships with 17 partners “are in motion,” a list that excludes China.