A HINT TO WASHINGTON?
Indian negotiators are in the US to discuss a bilateral accord. Modi’s need for a quick deal – while protecting vulnerable farmers from US produce – is understood well on the other side.
To give a signal that it won’t be a walkover, New Delhi has told the Word Trade Organization that India reserves the right to respond to the Mar 12 US tariffs on steel and aluminium. But ending US$2 billion of concessions doesn’t change the Modi government’s policy of not starting a tit-for-tat against Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
The advantage in talks remains with Washington, especially after Trump linked trade to the truce and said that India has proposed to drop all tariffs on US goods. Indian officials have denied making any such offer.
“Terror and trade cannot go together,” Modi said in a televised address after the ceasefire. Since India-Pakistan business is minuscule and declining, the intended recipient of the message must be the prime minister’s right-wing supporters and jingoistic anchors on Indian television: They shouldn’t feel too let down even if the Americans appear to be putting India and Pakistan on an equal footing by dangling the carrot of commerce in front of both.
But if the comment was also a hint to the White House to stop injecting itself into South Asia’s long-running feud, then the suggestion has fallen on deaf ears.
Trump quipped in Riyadh that Modi and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif might as well “go out and have a nice dinner together”. This creates problems for India. As its foreign minister said, bilateral talks with Pakistan can only be about terrorism.
Does the US president not know that his bluster is making the Modi administration look weak? Or is that the goal – to put New Delhi in a corner and force it to wrap up a trade deal advantageous to Washington?
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