With several big companies having opened or looking to open Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, experts have expressed optimism that more R&D centres and customer care offices may relocate here. They also noted that stock markets would have reacted negatively if Trump’s return posed a threat to India’s interests.
Former Ambassador Ashok Sajjanhar has projected that India and the US will be able to further strengthen their multifaceted cooperation in the Trump 2.0 regime, contending that Trade and Technology will witness a significant upsurge.
Pointing to endeavours like the Initiative for Critical and Emergent Technologies, AI, Quantum Computing, Robotics, Transfer of Technology for the GE F414 aircraft engines, Semiconductor manufacturing etc. taken during President Biden’s current term, Sajjanhar hopes that these mutually beneficial initiatives will be supported and promoted by President-elect Trump too.
He claimed that Trump’s proposed pushback against China will yield advantages to India in greater investment, production, and employment by promoting the China+1 investment strategy by the US and other countries.
However, Sajjanhar flagged that Trump has characterised India as the Tariff King and the worst abuser of tariffs. Stating that Trump had threatened to impose tariffs on all imports from India into the US, he pointed out that the earlier regime under Trump had removed goods worth $6 billion from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), imposed 10% penalty tariffs on imports of Indian steel and Aluminium into the US and insisted on the removal of import tariffs on Harley Davidson motorbikes from the US to India.
With the growth in the Indian economy in the past eight years, he called for a need for hard negotiations with Trump’s team, including the US Trade Representative, to safeguard India’s interests in areas like H1B visas and visas for family members of Indian professionals.
India already has a Migration and Mobility Agreement with the US that includes cooperation on a range of issues including combating illegal migration; facilitating legal migration; promoting mobility of students and professionals etc. Sajjanhar called for the implementation of the terms of the existing agreement in letter and in spirit to protect the interests of India’s technical personnel and professionals travelling legally to the US.
India’s former Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Jayant Dasgupta said that Indian companies may have to reconsider their H1B plans, and software companies may have to engage locals for on-site handholding and maintenance.
Assuring that concerns about H1B visas won’t make much impact, experts pointed out that the provision of remote work for skilled professionals will keep jobs, incomes and taxes within India as well as increase domestic consumption.
On a brighter note, Dasgupta projects a fillip to India’s ambitions of being a major defence exporter, adding that trade in the sector will be a two-way traffic. Terming Trump’s pre-poll claims of imposing 60% tariffs on Chinese imports and 10-20% on other countries as conjecture, he quipped that even if such a measure is taken it will imply export opportunities for countries like India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Bangladesh.
Stating that India isn’t protectionist and has always been welcoming of competition from American companies, experts said that Trump’s attack has always been on non-transparent economies and not open and transparent economies like India.
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