Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that India and the United States have reached a plateau in negotiations for a trade agreement. She said giving or taking more beyond this point would be very difficult for both countries.

Speaking at the Munich Leaders Meeting in New Delhi, Sitharaman said the agreement was still being hard and very rigorously negotiated. She added that the two sides could still explore any remaining room for compromise.

She pointed to the trade imbalance as a key feature of India-US economic ties. The trade balance is in India’s favour, she said, and the United States would naturally want to reduce what it sees as losses built up over the years.

The two countries have been negotiating a bilateral trade agreement since February 2025. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said last week that a deal was not imminent, after talks with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal in the United States.

Sitharaman also noted that trade negotiations worldwide are changing. Tariffs, she said, were once used inside a clear framework, but countries are now looking at new ways to fix trade gaps.