President Donald Trump and his team are talking up the opportunity to finally achieve stricter border security, wider tax cuts and reduced reliance on Chinese manufacturing amid the spread of the coronavirus throughout the U.S. Some officials see it as a narrow opening to offset the political damage from the coronavirus outbreak and deliver — or at least, talk about — some of the president’s longstanding promises.
Photo/White House Flickr
President Donald Trump’s high-voltage visit to India has further cemented the close ties between the world’s oldest and largest democracies. The two sides have agreed to elevate relations to a Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. The addition of the word “comprehensive” acquires new salience in a time of flux, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
The COVID-19 outbreak has hit at a time of much greater economic vulnerability than in 2003, during the SARS outbreak, and China’s share of world output has more than doubled since then. With other major economies already struggling, the risk of outright global recession in the first half of 2020 seems like a distinct possibility.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting the U.S. President Donald Trump in New Delhi. Photo/PIB
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that India will buy $3 billion worth of military equipment, including attack helicopters, as the two countries deepen defence and commercial ties in an attempt to balance the weight of China in the region. India and the United States were also making progress on a big trade deal, Trump said. Negotiators from the two sides have wrangled for months to narrow differences on farm goods, medical devices, digital trade and new tariffs.
More immediately though Delhi, like Beijing, must deal with Trump’s determination to recast the global trading system and reconstitute major trading partnerships. Trump is convinced that the rest of the world has taken advantage of America’s “foolish” trade policies in the past. He only blames America’s globalist establishment.
India and the United States are far from becoming formal allies. They are dogged by persistent trade disagreements, which India shows no inclination to settle. But given Trump’s record with other U.S. allies, his administration has been surprisingly lenient when it comes to India’s uncompetitive trade practices. It has also kept mum about India’s feared drift toward illiberalism, enabling both countries to push ahead on strategic, especially defense, cooperation, which has always been the lodestar that guides U.S.-Indian relations.
TV channels and newspapers—especially in India—are likely to devote a considerable amount of coverage to a joint appearance in Ahmedabad, where Trump and Modi will address an expected 100,000 people at the world’s biggest cricket stadium. The glitzy optics of that event will prompt analysis about the budding personal chemistry between the two leaders—how both are men of the people who share a disdain for the media.
As trade between Washington and New Delhi has increased, so too have tensions. U.S. and Indian officials have disagreed for years on tariffs and foreign investment limitations, but also on other complicated issues, particularly within agricultural trade. Concern for intellectual property rights has preoccupied the United States for thirty years, while issues concerning medical devices and the fast-growing digital economy have more recently emerged.
New Delhi’s interest in bolstering ties with Brazil’s new leader suggests that it is aware of the potential the bilateral relationship holds. For New Delhi, relations with Brazil are of the highest importance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which until recently was considered a “forgotten continent” in Indian foreign policy. Bolsonaro’s visit gives us an opportunity to examine India’s engagement with LAC, which, although neglected, has great potential.
The British government still needs to negotiate the terms of its future relations with the EU, a task so complex that many doubt it can be completed by the end of the year, when another ominous deadline looms. In the meantime, the country will be stuck in EU purgatory, bound by the bloc’s laws and regulations but powerless to shape them. Trade deals with other countries remain to be hammered out. And at home, the toxic fallout of Brexit division will linger…
