MIIS coverage: Panel says India's global economic choices in post-WTO world are sound

Global trade policies employed by the Donald Trump-led US government have created an economic order where entities such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) are futile, but India is sending the right messages to global powers by actively participating in bilateral talks with the US, said two veterans of trade and geopolitics at the Mint India Investment Summit 2025 in Mumbai.

“I think the message from Delhi to Washington has gone very clearly,” said Rajiv Bhatia, distinguished fellow at Gateway House. “We are ready for a mutually beneficial, mutually negotiated agreement (with the US).”

Bhatia, a 37-year career diplomat and a former India ambassador to various countries including Myanmar and Mexico, clarified that India had made a sound economic choice to negotiate with the US for a bilateral agreement that could potentially benefit both the world’s largest economy and the fastest growing one.

Bhatia expressed confidence that India's interests would be safeguarded in the talks. “There is confidence, there is maturity that we understand what is happening in the world, and we would try to deploy these changes and shifts in such a manner that India’s interests, India’s political interests, economic interests, are not affected,” he said.

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The global economic order, set in stone after the second World War, is now up for renegotiation as governments across the globe adopt more protectionist trade policies, and dismantle the progress made by globalisation. Donald Trump's retouches to all of the US’s bilateral agreements should be taken seriously, and we should not demonise the head of state, said the former diplomat.

Anup Wadhawan, former commerce secretary in the Union government, concurred, and critiqued Trump’s approach towards measuring economic growth and prowess only using the goods trade surplus.

“President Trump's rhetoric is very misleading. He is looking at the goods trade deficit as the only measure of American success. But you need to look at the economic success of our country much beyond goods. The US economy has graduated beyond goods,” he pointed out, adding that the US was a services-based economy and that lots of developing countries had compromised to provide economic benefit to American interests, such as big tech companies.

“They are a services economy, they are a tech economy. They are, you know, the Microsofts, the Amazons, the Facebooks, the Googles, they are earning billions of dollars abroad,” said Wadhawan.

Global presence

American big tech companies have long had a global presence, where they have negotiated agreements with multiple developing nations that benefit the corporate and not the host nation, Wadhawan said. He also said the WTO was created as an equitable organisation to further the cause of developing nations, but that it failed to bridge the development differential between developed and developing nations.

“Ultimately, America will realize their problem is not exploitation by the world. Their problem is not that we have not done well as an economy because of their trading partners being unfair to them. They will realize that what is wrong with America is lack of equity, and ultimately, they have to face the consequences,” said Wadhavan.

Bhatia said tariffs have a peculiar reputation in India, especially at a time when India was negotiating a trade deal with the US. “Tariffs are being seen by a large section of people in India as our one pressing opportunity to reform our economy,” he said. “Just as we faced several important moments in the past, this is a moment for us to bring competitiveness to our products by lowering down duties somewhat to the same level as ASEAN countries.”

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This also follows the announcement made by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech for FY26 that domestic manufacturing as well as India's businesses becoming globally competitive are key growth engines for the country in the coming years.

At a time when India is negotiating with the US, it is also negotiating a new relationship with its neighbour China. Bhatia said that serious efforts are being taken to ensure that India-China relations are bettered. But it is unlikely that these relations will return to the age-old “Hindi Chini bhai bhai” moniker, he clarified.

“There is an America factor in India-China relations. And there is a China factor in India-America relations. Yet, serious efforts are being made to take the negotiations forward. And the hope is that things will move in a positive direction,” said Bhatia.

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