US President Donald Trump has said that the US and India are “pretty close” to a bilateral trade deal which will be “a much different kind of deal” than the pacts that the US has with others.

Responding to a question on the India trade agreement, Trump, while speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, said, “They want to make a deal. We are going to make a deal. Pretty close, yeah. It’s going to be a much different kind of deal than we have done.”

This echoes what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told The Indian Express a day earlier when he said the two sides are “incredibly close” to signing the deal, and that “99 per cent of the work” had been done.

Since early 2025 when the Trump administration entered office a second time, the US has inked trade pacts with Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

On Tuesday, Rubio said, “I don’t want to get into the details of the sticking points. I can simply tell you that (they are) there.…