New Delhi stood its ground. Significantly enough, it sealed three major trade pacts last year. Towards the end of 2025, a free trade pact with New Zealand allows zero duty market access on 100 per cent of Indian exports. While India has offered tariff liberalisation in 70 per cent of lines covering 95 per cent of both countries’ bilateral trade, New Zealand has committed to facilitating investments of USD 20 billion into India over the next fifteen years as a part of the pact. Prior to this, India and the United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, a bilateral free trade pact, which provides for duty-free access to 99 per cent of India’s exports to the UK. Bilateral trade has already reached USD 56 billion, and the target is to double this number by 2030.
Future partnership
India has also initialed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Oman that provides for market access for Indian goods with zero duty access on 98.09 per cent of Oman’s tariff lines. It also provides for 100 per cent FDI by Indian companies in major services sectors in Oman through commercial presence. Long before Trump’s tariff taunts, New Delhi had gotten into a Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement with EFTA countries comprising Switzerland, Iceland, Norway & Liechtenstein, an important economic bloc in Europe. EFTA has committed to promoting investments with the aim of increasing the stock of foreign direct investments by USD 100 billion in India in the next 15 years and facilitating one million direct jobs in India through such investments.
Following the signing of the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, total bilateral trade reached USD 24 billion in 2023-24, marking a 14 per cent growth in India’s exports to Australia as compared to 2022-23. This positive momentum continues in the current fiscal year as well. Since the signing of the India – UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the bilateral merchandise trade between the two nations has nearly doubled reached USD 83.7 billion in 2023-24. India and Mauritius signed a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement a few years ago. As per an official release, between November 2024 and November 2025, India’s total exports rose from USD 64.05 billion to USD 73.99 billion, registering a 15.52 per cent growth.
Sometime in November last year, India and Israel signed the Terms of Reference for an FTA and is expected to deepen cooperation in sectors such as fintech, agritech, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, machine learning, pharmaceuticals, space and defence. India is also in discussion with the EU for an FTA and also an ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement. Discussions are also on with Canada and Mexico. If 2025 saw a complete reset of the global trading order, New Delhi is trying hard to secure its interests in the international trading arena
