India, Jan. 9 -- The India-US trade deal didn't happen because Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn't call US President Donald Trump, according to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Speaking with venture capitalist and entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya on his 'All In' podcast on Thursday, Lutnick said he asked for PM Modi to call Trump to close the deal. However, he said India was "uncomfortable" doing it, "so Modi didn't call".

Lutnick said the US did trade deals with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam but he assumed the trade deal with India was going to be done before them.

". we did Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, we announced a whole bunch of deals. So we did these whole bunch of deals.because we negotiated them and assum...