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Business News/ Industry / Manufacturing/  Donald Trump as US president may deal a blow to Modi’s Make in India push
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Donald Trump as US president may deal a blow to Modi’s Make in India push

A US president who's pledged to bring manufacturing jobs back to America and raise barriers to imports hardly helps Narendra Modi's Make in India cause

Donald Trump has characterized so-called H-1B visas as hurting American workers. Photo: ReutersPremium
Donald Trump has characterized so-called H-1B visas as hurting American workers. Photo: Reuters

Hong Kong: Donald Trump’s rise is the latest setback for India’s ambition to become a factory for the world.

Having missed the export-driven steam-boat that transformed China and fellow East Asian economies over the past several decades, India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pinned hopes on an ambitious “Make in India" campaign to make up lost ground.

With the world’s biggest consumer market soon to be overseen by a president who’s pledged to bring manufacturing jobs back to America and raise barriers to imports, that hardly helps Modi’s cause. Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union had already given impetus to a shift toward protectionism in developed nations, casting a pall on emerging-market prospects.

While China has far greater commerce at stake with the US, and bore the brunt of Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric, the prospect of new strictures cuts off an avenue for India at a time when global trade growth was already slowing.

ALSO READ: Donald Trump seeks to invest in India

“In the medium to long-term, a Trump presidency would add to India’s woes," said Priyanka Kishore, lead Asia Economist at Oxford Economics in Singapore. “It would impact India’s engine of growth—the services sector—negatively and also accelerate the nominalization of India’s services and services exports growth, which is an emerging source of concern."

India’s major partner

The US is India’s largest export market and one of its largest foreign investors.

Trump’s policy mix could slow planned US investment abroad, and place curbs on immigration, especially the information-technology workers that India specializes in. Trump has characterized so-called H-1B visas as hurting American workers. Indians account for a big share of these—70% of those approved in 2014 were to people born in the country—and they offer Indian companies a critical way to skill up their staff.

At the same time, there are plenty of reasons for Trump to look favourably on economic ties with India, which has been a geostrategic rival of China in south Asia. American companies like Wal-Mart Inc., Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. want to boost their presence in India, with its swelling middle class, and top executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook have toured the country seeking opportunities in a nation of 1.3 billion people.

Most attractive market

“India represents one of the most attractive long-term growth markets for US exports," said Rajiv Biswas, Singapore-based chief economist for Asia-Pacific at IHS Global Insight. Foreign direct investment rose to a record in 2015, official data show.

ALSO READ: Narendra Modi’s Rs8 trillion Make-in-India haul masks challenges to come

Any threat to India isn’t imminent, and much depends on whether Trump’s turns campaign rhetoric into policy reality. When the rest of the world was glued to Trump’s stunning election victory, most of India was more interested in the government’s shock move to ban Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes. Without warning, Modi sought to withdraw banknotes equivalent to 86% of the money in circulation in an attempt to crack down on black money and tax evasion.

The focus on more pressing domestic matters was understandable. While India ranks in the top ten nations that the US buys goods from, the trade deficit between both is nowhere near the levels that has dragged China into Trump’s cross hairs.

“Trump is not a threat to India," said Trinh Nguyen, a senior economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong. “It is the timing of its ambition to industrialize that is a bit off. And that doesn’t mean it won’t receive FDI. The country is expected to be one of the few ones with rapidly growing demand. It just means that the government will have to work harder to make it more competitive."

US ambassador Richard Verma said at an industry event in New Delhi on Friday that relations with India will be a priority for the new administration, and talked up prospects for Indian companies.

Still, Trump’s election adds risks for Asia’s third-biggest economy. There are already existing economic tensions, especially in the technology sector. India’s government has banned Facebook’s free web service and declined to exempt Apple from local sourcing rules.

“Even before Trump, many have had doubts whether robotization, and an increasingly protectionist and less material world are already making it difficult for India to repeat China’s path," said Nguyen. Bloomberg

Saritha Rai and Vrishti Beniwal also contributed to this story.

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Published: 11 Nov 2016, 05:33 PM IST
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