The long-pending India-US trade agreement has been "at the finish line for a very long time", US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said in Atlanta on Saturday, expressing confidence that the two countries would close the deal and pushing back against impatience over how long the talks have run.

Source: Nation Press (IANS)

"The trade agreement has been at the finish line for a very long time, and we hope we will be able to get it across the finish line," Gor told reporters ahead of the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting, held on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting. "The one thing I tell people: keep in perspective, the European Union trade deal with India took almost 20 years. We've been at this for a little over a year, so we got plenty of time," he said. "We will get it."

Source: NewKerala (ANI)

This is the latest in a series of near-the-line statements on the pact: both governments have maintained for months that negotiations are close to completion, and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has stated that the agreement would not compromise the sensitive interests of Indian farmers or other stakeholders. Gor cited the breadth of the current engagement — pharmaceuticals, information technology and military exercises among the areas where he said the two sides are working at a higher level than ever before — and pointed to the Tarang Shakti air exercise, which featured F-35 jets, as evidence of the wider partnership.

Atlanta meeting and what follows

Gor said the Atlanta Quad meeting — the foreign ministers of the US, India, Japan and Australia — is the third ministerial-level gathering of the grouping this year, after meetings in Delhi and Manila, and that it could pave the way for a summit of the four leaders. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is attending the Quad meeting, which is hosted by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio alongside the G20 foreign ministers' gathering.

~20 yearsTime the India-EU trade deal took, cited by Gor
A little over 1 yearAge of the current India-US trade negotiations
3rdQuad ministerial meeting of 2026 — after Delhi and Manila

No date for signing the trade agreement was announced, and Gor fixed no deadline. The practical test remains the text itself: tariff lines and market-access questions that have repeatedly held the pact at the final stage. Until an announcement names those terms, his remarks are a statement of intent from Washington's envoy — notable because he repeated them on the record, in person, on the day the Quad ministers met.