New Delhi, January 10, 2026: A critical timeline presented by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for a potential India-US trade agreement has directly intersected with the volatile period following India's Operation Sindoor and US President Donald Trump's controversial claim of brokering a ceasefire. This collision of events, according to Lutnick's account, ultimately prevented the signing of a bilateral trade pact, exposing deeper strains in the relationship.
The Converging Timelines: A Deal Ready Amidst Conflict
Lutnick indicated that the trade agreement between India and the United States was finalized and ready for signature between May 8 and July 2, 2025. This window fell between the announcement of US deals with the UK and Vietnam. However, the US Commerce Secretary claimed the deal could not proceed because he wanted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally call President Donald Trump to close it, a step he stated India was "uncomfortable" with.
The context for this discomfort was highly charged. On May 7, 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor, a military action targeting terrorist assets inside Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam killings. This triggered four days of intense fighting between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. On May 10, just before India and Pakistan announced a bilateral ceasefire, President Trump took to social media to declare a US-mediated ceasefire. India has consistently and firmly denied any third-party mediation, stating the ceasefire was agreed upon bilaterally at Pakistan's request.
Diplomatic Strain and the "Missed Train"
In the subsequent weeks, Trump repeatedly reiterated his mediation claim, while India's persistent denials created a visible strain in the Indo-US relationship. It was against this fraught diplomatic backdrop, as per Lutnick's narrative, that the US administration expected Prime Minister Modi's call to President Trump to seal the trade deal.
Lutnick asserted that by the time India agreed to sign, it had "missed the train" by about three weeks. He explained that Trump conducts trade deals like a "staircase," where the first country gets the lowest tariffs, with costs rising for subsequent partners. He claimed the US had by then moved on to agreements with other nations like Vietnam and Indonesia.
However, trade data complicates this narrative. While the UK deal featured 10% tariffs and Vietnam's 20%, several agreements announced after the Vietnam deal, including with South Korea, Japan, and EU nations, saw lower US tariffs. Conversely, tariffs remained high for BRICS nations, with India facing the highest at 50%.
Experts Question the "Phone Call" Theory
Trade experts and former officials have challenged Lutnick's simplification. Ajay Srivastava, former trade officer and head of think tank GTRI, pointed out that India-US negotiations continued actively for months beyond July 2025, focusing on market access, tariffs, and regulations.
"If Washington had already decided in July that there would be 'no deal' simply because Prime Minister Modi did not make a personal call, there would have been little reason for both sides to continue negotiating for months thereafter," Srivastava said. He argued the claim reads more as a retrospective justification than a contemporaneous reason.
Srivastava emphasized that reducing complex, multi-sector negotiations to the absence of a leader-level phone call misses the real points of contention: unresolved differences on tariffs, agriculture, digital trade, and regulatory autonomy.
Another significant irritant that emerged later was India's energy imports from Russia, which accounted for 37% of its oil imports around the time Lutnick says the deal was ready. By early August 2025, Trump imposed an additional 25% penal tariff over these continued purchases. Notably, this issue was not publicly flagged by the US before July, suggesting it may not have been an original deal-breaker.
This is not Lutnick's first criticism of India's trade stance. In September 2025, he suggested India would return to the table "saying sorry," and in June 2024, he cited India's military purchases from Russia and BRICS alignment on de-dollarization as actions that "rubbed the United States the wrong way."
The revelation of this timeline underscores how geopolitical flashpoints like Operation Sindoor and diplomatic missteps, such as Trump's unsubstantiated ceasefire claim, can have tangible, cascading effects on critical economic negotiations, leaving a major trade deal between the world's largest democracies in a continued state of elusiveness.
