US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday said many top US trading partners had made ‘very good’ proposals to avert US tariffs, and one of the first deals to be signed would likely be with India.
“I would guess that India would be one of the first trade deals we would sign,” Bessent told CNBC, adding that the US had also held very substantial negotiations with Japan and discussions with other Asian trading partners were going well.
“Vice-president Vance was in India last week, talked about substantial progress. I have mentioned that the negotiations with the Republic of Korea have gone very well, and I think we’ve had some very substantial negotiations with our Japanese allies,” Bessent told CNBC.
Speaking to reporters after two early morning television interviews, Besssent said the first such trade agreement might come this week or next.
He told CNBC that China’s recent moves to exempt certain US goods from its retaliatory tariffs showed that it wanted to de-escalate trade tensions with the United States, and said the US had refrained from escalating by embargoing those goods.
Bessent told Fox News that President Donald Trump will be “intimately involved” in each of the bespoke trade deals with each of 15 to 18 important trading partners, but it will be important to reach agreements in principle soon.
Asked whether he planned to call his Chinese counterpart to jump-start negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, Bessent said: We’ll see what happens with China. It’s important. I think it’s unsustainable from the Chinese side. So maybe they’ll call me one day.”
He earlier told CNBC that “all aspects of government are in contact with China”, and underscored that it was up to China to reduce tensions since they sold five times more goods to the US than vice versa.
Goyal in London
Commerce minister Piyush Goyal said he held a “productive meeting” to advance the ongoing free trade agreement negotiations with his UK counterpart, Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, soon after he arrived in London on Monday morning.
The minister, who is accompanied by a business delegation of leading Indian companies, is on a two-day visit to the UK aimed at strengthening trade and investment relations. His meeting with Reynolds was expected to take stock and move along the FTA negotiations, believed to be approaching their final stages.