India Ready to Sign Deals That Protect Its Interests: Goyal

India is negotiating trade agreements with countries on its own terms, and 'national interest will always be supreme,' Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal asserted on Friday, even as the country's trade negotiators returned from Washington after extensive nearly week-long parleys with their US counterparts in a bid to seal an interim bilateral trade deal.

- SHREYA NANDI

An official team led by India's chief negotiator, Department of Commerce Special Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, was in the US from June 27, and had extended its stay till Thursday to resolve key issues of contention between the two countries.

However, India hasn't signaled the finalization of an interim deal yet, and the 90-day pause on US' reciprocal tariffs expires on July 9. If an agreement is not firmed up by then, Indian exports to the US could be laden with a 26 per cent duty as per US President Donald Trump's country-specific reciprocal tariff plan unveiled on April 2.