Kwatra : Working with US to seal balanced trade deal

"On trade and tariff...we remain constantly engaged with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) with the hope to find a mutually beneficial and a balanced trade arrangement as early as possible,” Kwatra said.

“Our effort all along, right through this whole year, the tone for the relationship was set during the PM's visit in early February. We agreed to a very, very significant and substantial outcome document across range of areas. Space was one of them,” he said.

Kwatra termed India's successful launch of an American communication satellite on Wednesday as a “very important and big day” for partnership between Washington and New Delhi, saying it caps a series of achievements in 2025 in bilateral space cooperation between the countries.

In a historic achievement, Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) heaviest rocket LVM3-M6 successfully placed the next-generation commercial communication satellite BlueBird-6 (Block-2), developed by AST SpaceMobile, USA, into its precise intended orbit. LVM3 carried the heaviest commercial satellite ever launched from Indian soil, underscoring LVM3's growing capability as a reliable heavy-lift launch vehicle.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the US in February for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump, their first meeting within weeks of Trump's inauguration for a second term in the White House.

Kwatra referred to the Axiom-4 Mission, which had carried Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station, marking India's first human spaceflight mission to the ISS. He also noted the ISRO–NASA NISAR mission for advanced Earth observation, now successfully realised, launched, and operationalised.

“And if you look at the areas which we have plotted in the field of space, you can easily see 10 months down the line, they have mostly, if not all of them, achieved really. We continue to work very, very proactively in other areas also including in the fields of trade, science and technology, artificial intelligence,” Kwatra said. — PTI