Over the past 25 years, the United States and India have deepened their cooperation, transforming a relationship that was once defined by estrangement and tension. The two countries were at odds for much of the twentieth century, with a statist, protectionist India wary of Washington’s free-market agenda and the United States suspicious that India’s professed nonalignment veiled deep ties to the Soviet Union. But much has changed since the end of the Cold War and India’s subsequent embrace of economic liberalization in 1991. The partnership between India and the United States has grown increasingly close, from an important civil nuclear deal struck in 2005 to the two countries’ involvement today in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a security partnership focused on the Indo-Pacific.
When it comes to trade, however, the countries’ cooperation has lagged far behind. U.S.-Indian trade ties remain superficial compared with the sophisticated economic links that the United States has built with other major democracies such as Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, as well as the panoply of free trade agreements that India has recently inked with other new partners. In fact, key fundamentals of the U.S.-Indian trade relationship have changed very little since both countries joined the World Trade Organization as founding members, in 1995—and some have deteriorated. In 2019, for example, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative ended India’s zero-tariff access to the U.S. market, stating in a press release that New Delhi had “implemented a wide array of trade barriers that create serious negative effects on United States commerce.” If that salvo was intended to force New Delhi to allow U.S. companies easier access to the Indian market, it failed: U.S. exports to India continue to face some of the steepest tariffs in the world.
The above excerpt was originally published in Foreign Affairs.
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