Rubio: US-India Trade Deal Near Completion
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- Marco Rubio said on May 24, 2026 that US-India bilateral relations "have not lost momentum" and expressed hope that a bilateral trade deal would be sealed "soon"
- Rubio held talks with India's Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar on the second day of his visit and described his time in India so far as "fantastic"
- Rubio arrived in India on Saturday May 23, 2026 on his first official visit to the country, ahead of a Tuesday May 26 meeting with his counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan (the Quad)
- The visit comes during what the source describes as "an economic and diplomatic downturn" between the US and India, strained largely by Trump's tariff policies that raised duties on several Indian exports
Why it matters: Rubio's upbeat framing is doing heavy lifting: he insists momentum holds even as the same visit is explicitly set against a tariff-driven downturn that has raised duties on Indian exports. With a Quad foreign ministers' meeting days away on May 26, the trade deal timeline becomes leverage in the broader Indo-Pacific alignment — and the gap between Rubio's rhetoric and the tariff reality is the story negotiators must close.
