US, India trade blows over commerce

WASHINGTON: Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador to New Delhi, famously scoffed that US-India trade was “flat as a chapatti” when he first came to the subcontinent. By the time Tim Roemer, Blackwill’s successor once-removed, demitted office last June, he might well have thought it had puffed up like a poori, rising some 32% during his time there.

Two-way trade between the two countries is expected to cross $100 billion sometime this year, a landmark, but a mere one-fifth of the $500 billion US and China rack up. Roemer, now a “strategic advisor” to the consultancy firm APCO Worldwide, sounds exasperated as he talks of the roadblocks and mishaps that have stunted it (and which were attributed for his exit from New Delhi; he denies it, saying it was family obligations and personal calling caused him to leave India, not the fact that the US lost the bid for multi-role combat aircraft.)

Still, he does not hold back from reeling off the “growing obstacles and difficulties in trade that is causing rising frustration” in Washington:”There needs to be a political reckoning on several of these issues. These are all priorities that would be helpful not just to the US businesses but also helpful to Indian people.

However, he says with a sense of urgency, given the struggle that Europe is going through and the worldwide economic slowdown, US and India have a “historic opportunity to concentrate not just to build a bridge between the two countries, but also help the poor and middle class people in both countries to benefit from trade”. To this end, he wants both countries to commit to a bilateral investment treaty leading to a free trade agreement.

it’s hard for people to get their head around it. New Delhi too has its share of trade gripes: from visa issues for its professionals and business community to barriers to agricultural sales, including the much ballyhooed export of mangoes.