The United States Secretary of the United States, Scott Besent, speaks during the daily informative session in the Brady Information Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 29, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty images
The secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, said on Tuesday that the United States could be closing a commercial agreement with India, and that negotiations with the country “are moving well.”
“I think we are very close to India,” Besent said during a White House press conference on President Donald Trump’s centenary in office.
The White House has also had “substantial talks” with Japan on a possible commercial agreement and “the contours of an agreement” with South Korea could be united, Besent said.
Besent’s comments occur after Vice President JD Vance was known last week with the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
The two leaders “made very good progress, so I could see some ads in India,” said the Treasury Secretary. It did not provide a specific timeline.
“A country like India, which has published and ready tariffs, is much easier to negotiate with them,” he added.
Besent said Monday in the CNBC Squawk box that India could be among the first commercial agreements that the United States reaches.
The White House has been working to ensure commercial agreements with partners in the weeks after the announcement of Trump’s radical tariffs.
“We have 18 important relationships of commercial relations, we will talk to all those partners, or at least 17 of them, in the coming weeks, many of them have already come to Washington,” Besent said.
He said later during the informative session that commercial relations with 17 partners “are in motion”, a list that excludes China.
