In the interview with Bloomberg on December 11, India's Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said that “most India–US trade issues have been sorted out” and he “will be surprised if no India–US trade deal [is reached] by March.”

It's also important to note that Nageswaran's optimism has come undone in the recent past. “My personal confidence is that, in the next couple of months, if not earlier, we will see a resolution at least to the extra penal tariff of 25%,” he said in September.

By November, however, he turned more cautious. “Hope is all we have that it will be done soon,” he told CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit about a month earlier.

“I believe this is as much a matter of geopolitics as it is of bilateral trade,” the CEA said. “Right now, it is very difficult to

See Full Page