India-US Trade Pact to Be Finalised in Light of Changed US Tariff Rules: India's Trade Talks Map

The India-US Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) is a trade deal that India and the United States are negotiating. Its aim is to make it cheaper and easier for each country to sell goods and services to the other. It does this by cutting tariffs (import taxes) and removing other trade hurdles. The deal is being built in stages, with a first part (an interim deal) planned before a fuller agreement.

A Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is a deal between two or more countries to remove or sharply cut tariffs on most of the goods they trade with each other. Each country still keeps its own tariffs for countries outside the deal. Modern FTAs also cover services, investment and rules such as rules of origin. India calls its bigger deals by names like CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement), CECA or TEPA, but they are all FTAs in substance.

The Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU, is a group of five countries from the former Soviet Union that have joined their economies together. The members are Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Inside the union, goods, services, money and workers can move freely, and all members charge the same import tax on goods coming from outside. You can think of it as a smaller, looser version of the European Union, built around Russia.