India engaged with US to find mutually beneficial trade pact: Vinay Mohan Kwatra

'Our effort all along, right through this whole year, the tone for the relationship was set during Prime Minister's visit in early February. We agreed to a very, very significant and substantial outcome document across range of areas. Space was one of them,' Kwatra said.

New York/Washington: India remains very constantly engaged with the United States to find a mutually beneficial and balanced trade arrangement as early as possible, India’s Ambassador to the US Vinay Mohan Kwatra said.

"On trade and tariff...we remain very constantly engaged with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) with the hope to find a mutually beneficial and a balanced trade arrangement as early as possible,” Kwatra told PTI in an exclusive interview here.

“Our effort all along, right through this whole year, the tone for the relationship was set during Prime Minister's visit in early February. We agreed to a very, very significant and substantial outcome document across range of areas. Space was one of them,” he said.

Kwatra termed India's successful launch of an American communication satellite on Wednesday as a “very important and big day” for partnership between Washington and New Delhi, saying it caps a series of achievements in 2025 in bilateral space cooperation between the countries.

In a historic achievement, Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) heaviest rocket LVM3-M6 successfully placed the next-generation commercial communication satellite BlueBird-6 (Block-2), developed by AST SpaceMobile, USA, into its precise intended orbit. LVM3 carried the heaviest commercial satellite ever launched from Indian soil, underscoring LVM3’s growing capability as a reliable heavy-lift launch vehicle.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the US in February this year for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump, their first meeting within weeks of Trump’s inauguration for a second term in the White House.

In the joint statement issued after the meeting, the two leaders had hailed 2025 as a “pioneering year” for US-India civil space cooperation, with plans for a NASA-ISRO effort through AXIOM to bring the first Indian astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), and early launch of the joint 'NISAR' mission, the first of its kind to systematically map changes to the Earth’s surface using dual radars.

The leaders had called for more collaboration in space exploration, including on long duration human spaceflight missions, spaceflight safety and sharing of expertise and professional exchanges in emerging areas, including planetary protection.

The leaders also committed to further commercial space collaboration through industry engagements in conventional and emerging areas, such as connectivity, advanced spaceflight, satellite and space launch systems, space sustainability, space tourism and advanced space manufacturing.

Kwatra referred to the Axiom-4 Mission, which had carried Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station, marking India’s first human spaceflight mission to the ISS. He also noted the ISRO–NASA NISAR mission for advanced Earth observation, now successfully realised, launched, and operationalised.

“And if you look at the areas which we have plotted in the field of space, you can easily see 10 months down the line, they have mostly, if not all of them, achieved really. We continue to work very, very proactively in other areas also including in the fields of trade, science and technology, artificial intelligence,” Kwatra said.

“We have been working with a range of stakeholders in the US, both in the private sector, the government sector, in the think tank circle for a very substantial participation of theirs in the upcoming AI Action Summit in February,” he said.

India will host the AI Impact Summit on February 19-20 in New Delhi, the first time an AI summit will be hosted in the Global South, after similar Global AI Summits in Bletchley Park (UK), Seoul and Paris.

Kwatra added that “technology has been a very principal domain of our engagement.”