Greer says the India trade deal is in the short strokes, and not imminent

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Friday that talks with India are toward the end, and that a deal is not imminent. He used the American phrase short strokes after a meeting with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on the sidelines of the G20 trade ministerial in Milwaukee.

Greer told a press conference that the conversation with Goyal had been constructive, that staff were meeting because they were in the country, and that Washington was still trying to finish the trade deal. He said President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a constructive call on Wednesday, 30 September, US morning time. His sense was that the two leaders may speak again very soon to judge progress. He also said the two sides had identified the universe of items that are sticking points and were working on them. He did not name the items.

That last omission is the part of Friday's remarks that still governs the calendar. A deal described as near the end, with the remaining disputes mapped and unnamed, can sit there for months. The interim agreement was meant to be finished by March or April 2026. Neither the interim text nor the broader bilateral trade agreement has been signed. Goyal has said India will not sign until it is clear the country receives a comparative advantage over competitors, the condition he says was agreed in February 2026.

What changed under the two leaders, and what did not

The February understanding was the political frame for the interim deal. Six months later, Greer's public line is that the end is visible and the signing is not. Ajay Srivastava of the Global Trade Research Initiative told the Business Standard that clarity on the US offer was itself likely to be a sticking point, and that a US court judgment had removed the bargain Washington thought it held. Greer did not address that judgment in the remarks carried from Milwaukee.

A separate US lever is now on the statute book. Trump has signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which gives him authority to put tariffs of up to 100 percent on countries, including India and China, that keep buying Russian oil and gas. He has not announced a final rate or a coverage list. The authority sits beside the trade talks rather than inside them. Indian officials have treated a tariff threat tied to Russian crude as a different negotiation from the market-access list Goyal took to Milwaukee.

The United States is also expected to publish the results of a second Section 301 inquiry on overcapacity. At the G20, Goyal said India's manufacturing capacity serves domestic and global needs and that, in the sectors named by the G20 presidency, India does not have structural excess capacity. That sentence is aimed at the 301 file as much as at the bilateral deal. If Washington folds an overcapacity finding into the tariff schedule, the universe of sticking points Greer described gets a new item after Milwaukee, not before it.

The call that is still only expected

Greer's most concrete forward marker is a possible second Modi-Trump call. He did not give a day. He said it would be to assess where the talks stand, which is a review, not a signing session. Staff meetings in the United States can clear annexes. They cannot close a deal whose remaining items have been identified and not published.

For exporters the operable fact on Saturday is the one Greer put in a single sentence: toward the end, not imminent. The interim deadline of March-April has already passed. The comparative-advantage condition Goyal stated in February is still India's public test. The Graham Act tariff authority is unused, and the second 301 result is unpublished. Until one of those four moves, the Milwaukee press conference is a status report, not a date.