Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has denied suggestions that India has an obligation to import $500 billion worth of goods from the United States under the new India-US trade framework. He said the engagement is based on commercial intent, not compulsion.

“We don’t have to buy. We intend to,” Goyal said in an interview with news agency ANI when asked if India should buy $100 billion a year for five years. He explained that “there was no such constraint” and said the figures reflect India’s growing import needs in sectors where the US has the capacity to supply competitively.

“There is no such limitation. We calculate that the requirements we have for the import of certain items where the United States has the ability to sell us things like crude oil, LNG, LPG, aircraft, their engines, their spare parts and cooking coal.”

Goyal pointed to the expansion of India’s steel capacity as one of the main drivers of future imports. “We have 140 million tonnes of steel capacity. We will increase that to 300 million tonnes. Our current coal requirement for steel is already $17 billion. It will probably become $30 billion. Only $30-35 billion per year will be needed to coke coal.

The Commerce Minister also referred to existing aircraft orders and future aviation needs. He said India has already given orders to Boeing for aircraft worth $50 billion, plus orders for engines and spare parts. “I suspect we’ll need $80 billion to $100 billion in civil aviation-related products alone.”

Energy is another area he listed that India can import from the US. “We continue to buy a lot of energy needs from around the world, and this is growing every year by 8-10%. Now we will require huge amounts,” he said.

Goyal linked the future imports to India’s push into digital infrastructure and emerging technologies. “We are creating data centers. We are developing the economy of AI and quantum computing in a big way. All of this will require large amounts of ICD products. When we calculate these products, currently as we speak, we are already importing $300 billion a year of these products from different parts of the world.”

“In the next 5 years, we estimate that we will need $2 trillion of these products where America has very good capabilities and capacity to support the Indian economy with high quality at competitive prices. So we expect them to offer us very competitive prices. We intend to buy a good volume of these products out of our $2 trillion imported. India intends to buy.”

Last Monday, US President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that, with immediate effect, the US would reduce its reciprocal tariff on India from 25% to 18% under the trade agreement. He also said that India will move forward to reduce tariffs and non-tariff barriers against the US to “zero”.

“The Prime Minister also pledged to ‘BUY AMERICAN,’ at a much higher level, in addition to more than $500 billion in energy, technology, agriculture, coal and many other US products,” Trump wrote.

Opposition leaders criticized the government, claiming that India had bowed to US pressure and agreed to double imports. The Government, however, clarified that the figure of 500 billion dollars is distributed over five years, which implies about 100 billion dollars per year.

India’s joint statement on the framework clearly states that New Delhi “aims to purchase $500 billion in energy products, aircraft and aircraft parts, precious metals, technology products and coking coal from the United States over the next 5 years. India and the United States will significantly increase trade in technology products, including graphics processing units (GPUs) and other goods used in data centers, and expand joint technology cooperation.”