Indo-US Trade Deal: Pretentious Equality Between In equals ; Best Amongst Bad Options To Be Taken: परन्तु भारतीय कृषि , स्वास्थ और संप्रभुता को बचाना आवश्यक है. पाकिस्तानी ख़तरा !
Rajiv Upadhyay
The relief of finally India and USA agreeing for a trade deal was short lived . Bangladesh Yunus , just before exit delivered a surprise by getting a zero tariff on textiles made by US Cotton or manmade fibre. It can import US cotton , make yarn and apparels / clothing’s for export to USA . It gives Bangladesh exports an eighteen percent cost advantage over India , Pakistan , Vietnam etc . in US market . For a textile export dependent Bangladesh it is a god gift. But our Tamilnadu’s Tirpur it is a shock .
India also imports a lot of cotton from USA . It will be a difficult target for our MEA to extract a similar tariff from USA for our textiles .
Basically India is at a great disadvantage with USA as it wants to protect its trade surplus of around thirty billion dollars which Trump wants to equalise. India extracted a fairly reasonable deal considering our disadvantage which was accentuated as Trump downgraded QUAD and Indo Pacific. It has mentally accepted Chinese rise as inevitable and willing to sacrifice Taiwan for a good bargain on G-2 . It does not regard Russia as a big threat to USA . Ukraine is just a pawn to be sacrificed at right moment.
Europe too has been downgraded like QUAD . Latin America has been silenced by military action in Venezuela.
India is too small to resist US global menacing . But on Russian oil it has been able to steer clear of Western sanctions very effectively by silent diplomacy .
The present crisis too has to be handled with out press conferences and theatrics to match Trump.
But GM food is a poison . Any import of genetically modified corn or Soyabean for human consumption will be a disaster . Similarly poultry , dairy , fishing and agriculture sector can not opened . We cannot kill our economy in Europe style by increasing the energy cost also . That is a very tight rope walking even for the best diplomats like our Jai Shankar .
But can frustrated USA prompt Pakistan to start a mini war by attacking our dams ?
With Chinese HQ 19 missile defence , J35s stealth fighters, and 400 Kms PL 20 Missiles Pakistan may succeed in giving us some initial shock defeats as earlier with Abhinandan and Rafaels .
Unless we can kill Pakistani defences completely in the beginning itself , we will have to go to USA to stop the war . Like President Clinton getting insurance sector opened in guise of mediation in Kargil war and giving India laser bombs at a price , president Trump will love to open our agriculture sector by letting India win at a price determined by USA !
It will be the real test of Indian diplomacy to divert the US fire power away from small gains like Indian agriculture market .
