India’s trade year has reached its decisive fortnight. A day after the India–United Kingdom Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement switched on — carrying more than $140 million of zero-duty exports across some 50 consignments in its very first day — attention has swung to Washington, where officials say a first-phase India–United States trade agreement is stuck at the “last 1%” of legal text. An interim tariff arrangement is set to lapse around July 22, and both sides are working to land a deal before it does.
The stakes are specific. Negotiators have settled the broad framework and are now finalising a tariff schedule, with two knots left to untie: New Delhi wants its residual duty pitched no higher than rival Asian exporters such as Vietnam and Indonesia, while Washington is seeking firmer assurances that Indian supply chains — in textiles, seafood processing and low-cost manufacturing — are free of forced labour. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump directed their teams to fast-track the pact at a G7 pull-aside last month, keeping the political momentum warm.
Britain has shown what a live deal looks like on day one. The task now is to convert a second and a third from framework into force before the clock runs.
Britain is the working proof of concept. From day one, CETA removed the 12% UK duty on Indian apparel, and the first shipments flew out from hubs as varied as Amritsar and the Ahmedabad region, spanning textiles, electronics, pharmaceuticals and gems and jewellery. A companion social-security convention spares Indian professionals on temporary UK postings from paying twice for up to five years. Taken with a concluded EU agreement moving toward signature, it sketches a trade map in which market access is being added market by market.
The constructive read is that access is only the invitation; the order book is the work. A US understanding would give Indian exporters preferential footing in their single largest market and complete a rare trifecta — Britain live, Europe near, America pending. The way forward runs through unglamorous plumbing: fast origin certification, mutual recognition of standards, and trade finance that reaches mid-sized firms, so the gains show up not only in headline totals but in the ledgers of the Tiruppur unit and the Vizag exporter.
