The India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF) will hold a meeting in Washington on January 11 to discuss issues concerning trade and investment between the two countries.

The commerce ministry has stated that the India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF), which resolves trade and investment issues between the two countries, will hold a meeting in Washington on January 11. The TPF includes five focus groups such as agriculture, investment, innovation, creativity (intellectual property rights), services, and tariff and non-tariff barriers.

Piyush Goyal, the Indian minister of commerce and industry, and Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, will co-chair the conference. Goyal will be on an official visit to New York and Washington, DC. The previous TPF meeting, which was the 12th one, was held on November 23, 2021, after a gap of four years. Working groups were reactivated after the last ministerial.

TPF is a platform for continuous engagement between two countries in the trade domain and to further the trade and investment relations between the two nations. Both countries look forward to the meeting and are confident of making progress on the trade challenges.

Earlier, the meeting was postponed in November last year due to local elections in both countries. In last year’s meeting, India asked for the restoration of GSP (Generalized System of Preferences) benefits to Indian exports, and the US stated that this could be considered.

To further promote trade, the two nations have expressed an intent to continue to work together on resolving outstanding trade concerns, as some of them require additional engagement to reach convergence in the near future.

The countries' bilateral trade has increased to USD 119.5 billion in 2021-2022, up from USD 80.5 billion in 2020-21. India received USD 55.61 billion in foreign direct investment from the US between April 2000 and June 2022.

During the first leg of the visit, Goyal will interact with CEOs of reputed multinational enterprises, join roundtable discussions with business leaders and think tanks, and visit industries in New York. Moreover, the two countries are collaborating under the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), 12U2 (India-Israel/UAE-USA), and IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework).