"Negotiations are still ongoing, although we like to believe that both sides have reached a plateau, beyond which giving or taking might be very, very difficult," Sitharaman said at the Munich Leaders Meeting in New Delhi.

However, the finance minister underlined that the both sides remain engaged in negotiations. "It's been a hard and very vigorously negotiated agreement. The negotiations are still ongoing," she said.

India and the United States launched bilateral trade agreement (BTA) negotiations in February 2025. After multiple rounds of talks, the two countries issued a framework for an interim trade agreement in February this year.

In recent months, both sides had claimed that the deal was near completion. In June, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor claimed that the deal was 99% complete, while Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal last month called it "almost done and dusted".

Goyal visited the United States from September 29 to October 5 for the G20 Trade Ministers' meeting. Last week, Goyal held a bilateral meeting with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

Following the meeting, Greer said the agreement was "not imminent". According to USTR, the two countries have identified "the universe of items that are sticking points."

Founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) Ajay Srivastava said tariff terms, which are the central issues in the negotiations, likely remained unresolved.

Under the framework for an interim agreement released in February, the US agreed to lower tariffs on Indian goods down from 50% to 18%. In return, India agreed to cut or eliminate its tariffs on the majority of American products.

However, a US Supreme Court judgement, which came just a couple of weeks following release of framework for an interim agreement, made the US offer of 18% tariff irrelevant.

"One possible reason is that the US tariff offer lost its original basis on February 20, 2026, when the US Supreme Court invalidated the reciprocal tariff regime," said Srivastava.

"The February framework had offered to reduce India's reciprocal tariff from 25% to 18% in return for substantial Indian concessions. Once that tariff regime was struck down, the value of the US offer became unclear," added Srivastava.

"The key question is therefore what tariff advantage Washington is now offering in return for India's concessions. Until that is settled, claims that the deal is nearly complete offer little clarity about its actual status," he added.