Consequently, New Delhi’s move last month to opt out of the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework being negotiated by the U.S. and 12 other countries has disappointed those who believed India had become more receptive to deal-making after concluding back-to-back trade pacts with the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

Given the comparatively small size of its domestic market, India needs large overseas markets to help its manufacturers reap the benefits of economies of scale.

The IPEF trade talks might have enabled India to fill the gap created when it dropped out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in 2019, just a year before that 15-nation trade liberalization deal was finalized.

It is understandable that India withdrew from RCEP, given that China is a core member. Most Indian manufacturers are uncomfortable with the idea of freer imports from China, given its low-cost production prowess, among other factors. Yet, by Washington’s design, China is not even a prospective member of IPEF.

But left-leaning economists and others are celebrating India’s IPEF move as preserving the country’s freedom to set its own policies on digital trade, labor and environmental issues.

They argue that the U.S. push for free cross-border data flows is aimed at helping its own technology companies maintain their global dominance and conflicts with India’s push for data localization, even though that effort is likely to increase business costs and slow the growth of the country’s digital economy.

The critics worry that linking trade with labor and environmental standards will provide grounds for the U.S. and other IPEF members to erect new barriers against Indian exports. If India had joined the trade pillar, they say, New Delhi would have had to amend many laws and harmonize its legislation with that of the U.S. without clear trade benefits since Washington has ruled out discussion of tariff reductions. They also expect the U.S. to push the IPEF to agree on tightened intellectual property rights standards that would hurt India’s producers of generic drugs.

But India’s decision to let go of the IPEF’s trade pillar while holding on to the framework’s other three core elements — supply chain resilience, infrastructure clean energy and decarbonization, and taxes and anti-corruption — makes little sense.

First, supply chains and trade are interconnected, so it is illogical for India to take part in discussions on only one of them. Second, not joining the trade pillar signals that India’s main motive behind joining U.S.-led initiatives such as the Quad or IPEF is a narrow focus on geopolitics, and that it lacks openness to broader economic cooperation.

Third, the stance regarding labor and environmental standards would appear to clash with Modi’s own efforts to update archaic labor rules and promote decarbonization and green energy.

Indeed, while New Delhi is discussing harmonizing standards in its free trade talks with the EU in order to support its exports, why can India not do the same with the U.S. and the IPEF? Especially since the U.S. could still impose new standards on its own, particularly with the World Trade Organization too paralyzed to act as a check on Washington.

Moreover, if Vietnam can accept tougher regulatory norms, why should India not do so unless it wants to let Hanoi build its share of the U.S. market for electronics, textiles and sporting goods? Indian products are already at a disadvantage in the EU as talks on a bilateral free trade deal drag on, while Vietnam has already implemented a deal with Brussels.

The signing ceremony of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement in Hanoi in June 2019.    © Reuters

Trade deals are not always about seeking improved market access. Often, they are about protecting existing positions when competitors are winning new preferential access, as with the dance among Vietnam, India and the EU. Interestingly, Vietnam is also pushing for data localization, yet it is remaining part of the IPEF trade pillar.

The criticism that the trade pillar of IPEF will not bring reduced U.S. import tariffs and hence offers limited gains for India is also flawed. Average U.S. import tariffs are far lower than India’s, so a group pact on tariffs would likely have required bigger cuts from New Delhi than from Washington.

India cannot pick and choose as trade deals are invariably about both give and take. Policymakers and the top guns of India Inc. boast of the country’s large and growing market of 1.4 billion people and its place as the world’s fifth-largest economy, but the purchasing power of the average Indian lags well behind that of his or her Chinese counterpart, underscoring the insufficiency of demand from India’s domestic market as a driver for manufacturing growth.

India, therefore should not let go of an opportunity for better access to a potential export market at least 10 times bigger than its domestic market. It must realize that its laws and policies will have to be in sync with international standards and in alignment with the U.S. as the major standard-setting country if it is serious about benefiting from globalization and world trade.

Given the current favorable geopolitical environment of companies and countries seeking alternative production platforms to China, India should reconsider engaging with the IPEF on trade.

Ritesh Kumar Singh is the founder and chief executive of policy research and advisory company Indonomics Consulting in New Delhi.

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While many WTO Members are urging the WTO membership to avoid imposition of export restraints at the present time to reduce food insecurity, a number of countries have shut down exports to protect their domestic consumers. India, which is the world’s second largest producer of wheat and had been looked to to help reduce the challenges in Africa and Asia from Ukraine’s inability to get grain harvested or exported, has faced very high temperatures this spring. In the last days, it has reversed its position of increasing exports to help countries in need to the position of shutting off exports immediately with the exception of volumes under contract and with a possible willingness to work with countries with food security issues. See Reuters, India bans wheat exports as heat wave hurts crop, domestic prices soar, May 15, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/india-prohibits-wheat-exports-with-immediate-effect-2022-05-14/ (“India banned wheat exports on Saturday days after saying it was targeting record shipments this year, as a scorching heat wave curtailed output and domestic prices hit a record high. The government said it would still allow exports backed by already issued letters of credit and to countries that request supplies ‘to meet their food security needs’.”); Washington Post, India bans wheat exports amid soaring global prices, May 14, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/14/india-wheat-banukraine/ (“In a Commerce Ministry order, Indian officials said they made the decision after considering India’s own needs and those of neighboring countries. India’s food security was ‘at risk’ because of surging international prices, the ministry said. The announcement was an abrupt reversal weeks after Indian officials and international analysts talked up the possibility of India’s significantly ratcheting up exports to fill the gap created partly by the war in Ukraine. International food prices have soared to record highs in recent months, putting pressure on billions of people, particularly the world’s poorest, officials at the United Nations have warned.”); ABC News, India open to exporting wheat to needy nations despite ban, May
15, 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/india-open-exporting-wheat-needy-nations-ban84728532  (“India on Sunday said it would keep a window open to export wheat to food-deficit countries at the government level despite restrictions announced two days earlier. India’s Commerce Secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam told reporters the government will also allow private companies to meet previous commitments to export nearly 4.3 million tons of wheat until July. India exported 1 million tons of wheat in April.”); The Times of India, Explained: Why India has banned wheat exports despite big trade plans, May 14, 2022, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/explained-why-did-india-ban-wheat-exportsdespite-big-trade-plans/articleshow/91565703.cms; Hindustan Times, G7 criticises India decision to stop wheat exports: Germany, May 14, 2022, https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/g7-criticises-india-decision-to-stop-wheat-exports-germany101652533657311.html (“‘If everyone starts to impose export restrictions or to close markets, that would worsen the crisis,’ German agriculture minister Cem Ozdemir said at a press conference in Stuttgart.”). 

Press accounts indicate that China’s wheat production for this year is uncertain because of weather considerations as well. See New York Times, War and Weather Sent Food Prices Soaring. Now, China’s Harvest Is Uncertain, May 12, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/business/china-wheat-food-pricesinflation.html  (“Ukraine’s wheat exports have been mostly halted since Russia’s invasion, while drought has damaged crops in India and the United States. China’s upcoming harvest is another concern.”).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture develops periodic forecasts for production and consumption of major agricultural crops. USDA released its latest global forecast for various crops for 2022-2023 including wheat on May 12, 2022. See USDA, World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, May 12, 2022, https://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/wasde0522.pdf. The description of wheat supply and demand is copied below.

“WHEAT: The outlook for 2022/23 U.S. wheat is for reduced supplies, exports, domestic use stocks, and higher prices. U.S. 2022/23 wheat supplies are projected down 3 percent, as lower beginning stocks more than offset a larger harvest. All wheat production for 2022/23 is projected at 1,729 million bushels, up 83 million from last year, as higher yields more than offset a slight decrease in harvested area. The all wheat yield, projected at 46.6 bushels per acre, is up 2.3 bushels from last year. The first survey-based forecast for 2022/23 winter wheat production is down 8 percent from last year as lower Hard Red Winter and Soft Red Winter production more than offset an increase in White Wheat production. Abandonment for Winter Wheat is the highest since 2002 with the highest levels in Texas and Oklahoma. Spring Wheat production for 2022/23 is projected to rebound significantly from last year’s drought-reduced Hard Red Spring and Durum crops primarily on return-to-trend yields.

“Total 2022/23 domestic use is projected down 1 percent on lower feed and residual use more than offsetting higher food use. Exports are projected at 775 million bushels, down from revised 2021/22 exports and would be the lowest since 1971/72. Projected 2022/23 ending stocks are 6 percent lower than last year at 619 million bushels, the lowest level in nine years. The projected 2022/23 season-average farm price (SAFP) is a record $10.75 per bushel, up $3.05 from last year’s revised SAFP. Wheat cash and futures prices are expected to remain sharply elevated through the first part of the marketing year when the largest proportion of U.S. wheat is marketed.

“The global wheat outlook for 2022/23 is for lower supplies and consumption, increased trade, and lower ending stocks. Global production is forecast at 774.8 million tons, 4.5 million lower than in 2021/22. Reduced production in Ukraine, Australia, and Morocco is only partly offset by increases in Canada, Russia, and the United States. Production in Ukraine is forecast at 21.5 million tons in 2022/23, 11.5 million lower than 2021/22 due to the ongoing war. Canada’s production is forecast to rebound to 33.0 million tons in 2022/23, up significantly from last year’s drought-affected crop.

“Projected 2022/23 world use is slightly lower at 787.5 million tons, as increases for food use are more than offset by declining feed and residual use. The largest feed and residual use reductions are in China, the European Union, and Australia as well as a sizeable decline in food use in India. Projected 2022/23 global trade is a record 204.9 million tons, up 5.0 million from last year. Imports are projected to rise on increased exportable supplies from Russia and Canada more than offsetting reductions for Ukraine and Australia. Russia is projected as the leading 2022/23 wheat exporter at 39.0 million tons, followed by the European Union, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Ukraine’s 2022/23 export forecast is 10.0 million tons, down sharply from last year on reduced production and significant logistical constraints for exports. India is expected to remain a significant wheat exporter in 2022/23. Projected 2022/23 world ending stocks are reduced 5 percent to 267.0 million tons and would be the lowest level in six years. The largest change is for India, where stocks are forecast to decline to 16.4 million tons, a five-year low.” 

With likely reduced availability of product globally and with reduced stocks of wheat on hand, the G7, led by the EU and US, are working to find ways to help Ukraine move its wheat production to export despite Russia’s closure of the Black Sea. Such efforts if successful will reduce the global damage done on food security on products like wheat. As reviewed in my last post,

“The EU is working to facilitate movement of Ukrainian agricultural products by land through EU member states. But the main challenges are the blockage of Black Sea ports by Russia and the reported theft of agricultural products and equipment from Ukrainian farms and depots. See, e.g., CNN, Russians steal vast amounts of Ukrainian grain and equipment, threatening this year’s harvest, May 5, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/europe/russia-ukraine-grain-theft-cmd-intl/index.html; Voice of America, Russian Blockade of Ukrainian Sea Ports Sends Food Prices Soaring, May 7, 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-blockade-of-ukrainian-sea-ports-sends-food-pricessoaring/6561914.html; Politico, EU plans to help Ukraine’s food exports dodge Black Sea blockade, EU farm chief warns Russia wants to portray itself as feeding the poor, while it destroys Ukraine’s farmland. May 10, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-plans-to-boost-ukraines-food-exports-black-sea-blockade/.”

May 11, 2022: Less than five weeks to the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference — what are likely deliverables?, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/05/11/less-than-five-weeks-to-the-wtos-12th-ministerialconference-what-are-likely-deliverables/.

Hopefully, India will in fact work to facilitate exports to many of the nations dependent on wheat from Ukraine in the coming months to help reduce the food insecurity flowing from Russia’s war in Ukraine. But the announcement on Friday of banning exports bodog sportsbook review is a concerning signal and will likely lead to even higher prices for wheat in the coming weeks and months.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, Current Thoughts on Trade.

To read the full commentary from Current Thoughts on Trade, please click here.

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Flows of goods and services between the two countries are well below the levels one would expect for the largest and sixth-largest economies in the world, especially given their economic complementarities and the strong link created by members of the Indian diaspora in the United States. Out of context, the numbers look robust: trade between the United States and India has risen from approximately $19 billion in 2001 to almost $160 billion in 2021. But that represents only around two percent of total U.S. trade and just 12 percent of total Indian trade. Moreover, there have been frequent trade squabbles and nagging disputes between the two countries. These are due, in part, to long-standing U.S. concerns regarding market access in India and India’s sensitivities about agricultural imports and the access of its skilled professionals to the U.S. market.

The fact that efforts to advance the bilateral trade agenda have frequently fallen short does not mean either country should give up. Enhanced bilateral trade is important for growing both economies and providing long-term ballast to U.S.-India partnership. To promote their commercial and strategic objectives, the two countries must also play a central role in developing the economic framework for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Failing to do so would provide opportunities for other countries, such as China, to create a trade order that would leave India and the United States on the outside looking in.

HEADING FOR THE EXITS

In recent years, the United States and India have pulled back from shaping the Asian trade landscape. In February 2016, the United States signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a trade pact among 12 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, and Vietnam. The TPP never went into force, however, because in early 2017, newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew the United States from the pact. Under Japan’s leadership, the remaining 11 signatories revived the agreement and created a successor, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

India also withdrew from a regional trade agreement. From 2013 to 2019, India was one of 16 Asian nations—including the large economies of China, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea—forging the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). As negotiations were wrapping up in November 2019, however, India pulled out, arguing that the deal would lead to a flood of imports from China, with which India already registered a sizable trade deficit. The other 15 nations signed the RCEP in late 2020, and the agreement went into effect on January 1 of this year, among ten of the signatories. (South Korea and Malaysia have subsequently joined, bumping the number to 12.)

The U.S. exit from the TPP and India’s withdrawal from the RCEP negotiations were driven, in large part, by a growing sentiment in both countries that trade deals have hurt their domestic manufacturing industries and cost middle class workers their jobs. Those concerns may well be legitimate, but failing to pursue trade deals handicaps both countries’ ability to tap foreign markets, participate in developing regional trade rules, and advance their broader objectives in the Indo-Pacific.

China, meanwhile, has pursued an expansive regional economic agenda. It was one of the first countries to ratify the RCEP agreement and encouraged others to follow suit. Last September, it unexpectedly submitted a formal application to join the CPTPP. Soon thereafter, it applied to join the regional Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, which is aimed at facilitating digital trade; its current signatories are Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, moreover, includes investments in regional infrastructure that will strengthen Beijing’s influence in Indo-Pacific countries and across the globe. The common denominator for China in all these initiatives is the ability to shape the rules for trade and investment while promoting integration with its neighbors and increasing their dependence on Beijing.

FITS AND STARTS

China’s assertive approach is a major reason why both India and the United States seem to be rethinking their economic and trade strategies, despite the domestic political headwinds: U.S. and Indian leaders understand that ceding the region to China may have irreversible consequences. Together, the U.S trade representative and India’s minister of commerce and industry have revitalized their Trade Policy Forum to discuss “the full range” of issues affecting their trade relationship. India also recently signed a trade deal with Australia and an economic partnership agreement with the United Arab Emirates, as well as launched or revived bilateral negotiations with Canada, the European Union, Israel, and the United Kingdom. At the same time, the Biden administration is putting the finishing touches on its new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to economically reengage with this dynamic region.

This does not mean the two countries are on the verge of a bilateral breakthrough. On several occasions, the United States and India have been on the cusp of agreeing on a package of trade measures only to come up short. This occurred most recently in 2019, when the Trump administration terminated India’s designation as a beneficiary under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, which gives duty-free treatment for imports of thousands of products from developing countries. To justify the move, Washington pointed to the fact that New Delhi had not provided the United States with “equitable access” to its market—one of the criteria for participation in the GSP.

The U.S. Congress now appears poised to renew the overall GSP program, which would provide the Biden administration with the authority to reinstate New Delhi’s GSP benefits and generate momentum for the reinvigorated Trade Policy Forum to resolve outstanding bilateral issues. This would clear out the underbrush in trade relations to allow for a more forward-looking engagement to take center stage. The two countries should also agree to a political standstill commitment to refrain from taking new trade-restrictive measures affecting each other, so that they do not end up in a situation where the deck is cleared only to be repopulated with new irritants.

In addition, Washington’s launching of the IPEF will set the agenda for U.S. economic engagement in the region, with a focus on four pillars: fair and resilient trade; infrastructure, clean energy, and decarbonization; supply chain resiliency; and tax and anticorruption. The United States is not aiming to negotiate a traditional trade pact, but rather is looking to work with multiple countries in the region on efforts to set high standards, adopt binding rules, and make softer commitments on cooperative efforts related to the four pillars.

At this point, India may not be ready to be a full member of the IPEF because of its own developmental constraints. But there may be opportunities for India to participate in certain aspects of the IPEF, such as infrastructure and resilient supply chains. For this regional economic initiative to be most meaningful, broad Indian participation should be an aspiration for both Washington and New Delhi.

THE QUAD

Another way to shape the regional economic order and counter China’s influence would be to expand the mandate of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—the grouping composed of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States known as the Quad. The Quad countries represent four of the largest and strongest economies in the region, with the United States viewing the Quad as “a premier regional grouping” that “delivers on issues that matter to the Indo-Pacific.” At this critical juncture, the Quad should get directly involved in designing regional rules and norms of commerce through the establishment of a trade working group, albeit with realistic expectations.

The Quad has carefully nurtured an expanding agenda of issues, ranging from humanitarian assistance to global health to critical and emerging technologies. Trade, however, is noticeably absent from the Quad’s agenda. This may be because a trade discussion would reveal differences among members and not readily lend itself to tangible results. But the United States already has bilateral trade agreements with Australia and Japan; those two countries, moreover, concluded an economic partnership agreement seven years ago. India has long had a similar agreement with Japan and has just signed an interim trade pact with Australia, with the aim of moving to a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year.

While Quad members are far from in sync on trade issues, these agreements provide the foundation for the Quad to begin work on select matters, adopting a building block approach. Because trade is both strategic and filled with esoteric detail, trade negotiators would benefit from having Quad leaders engaged to help them make the tough political decisions, keep the larger picture in mind, and delicately provide impetus for a pragmatic plan on trade that can help shape the regional architecture.

The trade working group could begin by considering relatively low-hanging fruit, such as trade facilitation, the behavior of state-owned enterprises, and liberalization of services sectors. Over time, the group could take on more challenging matters that originate from and build on the various bilateral agreements among the parties. The group could also address trade aspects of issues that are the focus of other Quad working groups or the IPEF, such as the digital economy, supply chains, and standards for critical and emerging technologies. To be sure, the four partners would need to be mindful of India’s different level of development. Given that a sizable portion of the Indian population lives below the poverty line, the Quad could agree to give India longer transition periods on opening its market to imports, so that farmers and family-owned businesses would have time to adjust to a steady increase of foreign products.

Some commentators have suggested that a better way to forge closer trade relations between the United States and India would be through a bilateral free trade agreement. But this would inevitably be a difficult and laborious process, with no guarantee of success. Even if India and the United States were able to hammer out such an agreement, they would still find themselves outside the economic integration underway in the region. In the meantime, China and other countries would be shaping the regional rules. As Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has pointed out in discussing the Indo-Pacific, “bilateralism has its own limits.”

DIFFICULT, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE

Despite efforts in recent years to strengthen the U.S.-Indian trade relationship, it remains a weak component of the strategic partnership. As a result, many current and former officials in both capitals have concluded that trying to enhance relations in this area is an exercise in futility. Undoubtedly, it will be difficult, but by making the political commitment to work together on the IPEF agenda and use the Quad as a vehicle to pursue closer trade ties, the two sides can make tangible progress. Over time, they could engage a broader set of Indo-Pacific partners—including those in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the CPTPP—to create a robust economic architecture for the region.

When Modi and U.S. President Joseph Biden held their first meeting in September of last year, Biden spoke of a bilateral relationship “destined to be stronger, closer, and tighter” that “can benefit the whole world.” By jointly announcing this vision for a new economic and trade strategy, and proceeding with a step-by-step approach to get there, the United States and India could reposition themselves geopolitically in the most dynamic region of the world and provide further impetus for their growth and prosperity.

Kenneth I. Juster is a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. Ambassador to India.

Mohan Kumar is Chairman of the Research and Information System for Developing Countries and India’s former lead negotiator at the World Trade Organization.

Wendy Cutler is Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute and former Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative.

Naushad Forbes is Co-Chair of Forbes Marshall, former President of the Confederation of Indian Industry, and author of The Struggle and the Promise: Restoring India’s Potential.

To read the full commentary from Foreign Affairs, please click here. 

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Despite some potential challenges, there is a new momentum in the India-U.K. bilateral engagement these days with both sides confident of moving forward swiftly. Mr. Goyal was emphatic that “nothing is necessarily a deal-breaker in this agreement,” and suggested that no one should “worry about issues which are sensitive to any country, because both sides have agreed that sensitive issues are not our priority”. Ms. Trevelyan viewed this deal as “a golden opportunity to put UK businesses at the front of the queue as the Indian economy continues to grow rapidly”, that will “unlock this huge new market for our great British producers and manufacturers across numerous industries from food and drink to services and automotive”.

New Delhi is hoping to conclude its first FTA in over a decade with the United Arab Emirates this year. And another one with Australia is in the offing.

There have been indications that instead of the two nations trying to tackle all sensitive issues in one go, there could be an interim pact to cover “low hanging fruit” to be followed by a full-fledged FTA in a year’s time. Such an early harvest deal can often be deleterious for the prospects for a full FTA, but given India’s abysmal reputation in concluding FTAs, this may not be a bad strategy in keeping interlocutors engaged in the process.

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As the global economy undergoes a fundamental transformation in the aftermath of COVID-19 and supply chains get restructured, India cannot lose any more time in setting its house in order. New Delhi is hoping to conclude its first FTA in over a decade with the United Arab Emirates this year. And another one with Australia is in the offing. If concluded, the India-U.K. FTA will be the next in line at a time when New Delhi is demonstrating a new seriousness of purpose as it negotiates 16 new and enhancing several other trade pacts with nations as diverse as Canada, the United States, the European Union and South Korea.

In fact, just before the launch of FTA talks with the U.K., India and South Korea also decided to expedite the upgradation of the existing FTA, formally called the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. The Narendra Modi government is showing a newfound flexibility in engaging with its partners on trade as it seeks balanced trade pacts at a time when new trade blocs in the Indo-Pacific such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership bodog casino (CPTPP) are gaining traction. Strategic partnerships without strong economic content would have no meaning in the Indo-Pacific, where China’s economic clout is growing by the day.

The reason
Britain has made a trade pact with India one of its post-Brexit priorities as it seeks a greater role in the Indo-Pacific. India is at the heart of the U.K.’s Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’, which has generated considerable interest around the world. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson came to office promising one of the deepest and broadest British foreign, security, development and defence reviews since the end of the Cold War. And the Integrated Review (a ‘comprehensive articulation of the U.K.‘s national security and international policy) released in March 2021 categorically underlined that, “In the decade ahead, the UK will deepen our engagement in the Indo-Pacific, establishing a greater and more persistent presence than any other European country”. While the U.K. will also be launching trade negotiations this year with Canada, Mexico and the Gulf to underscore its ‘Global Britain” credentials, a trade deal with India along with its membership in the CPTPP remains critical in anchoring the U.K. economically to the Indo-Pacific.

Many factors at play
A range of factors have coalesced to create an impetus for the U.K. to adopt a more robust Indo-Pacific strategy: the trading implications of Brexit; the U.K.’s changing approach towards China — shifting from being a major proponent of China to perhaps the most hawkish in Europe; and the fact that the U.S., the U.K.’s closest ally and security guarantor, remains firmly focused on the Indo-Pacific. Like its allies in the region, the U.K. recognises the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific to global stability and prosperity, and has made clear its intentions to deploy strategic assets to this end. London is also looking to amplify its efforts by entering into the regional security architecture. The trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS), announced in September 2021, enabling Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines with assistance from the U.S. and U.K., has given London a greater voice in the region.

Trade and investment will be a key dimension of this U.K. tilt. Brexit has necessitated greater access to non-EU markets, and the U.K.’s changing relationship with China requires a diversification of trading partners. But this shift in focus is also driven by a recognition that the Indo-Pacific is now largely the force behind global economic growth. The U.K. is looking to leverage its historical connections, development work, and its credibility when it comes to combating climate change (particularly relevant to these low-lying states vulnerable to sea-level rise) to help establish itself as a serious player in the region where there remain serious doubts about the U.K.’s staying power.

Through its Indo-Pacific tilt, the U.K. is finally carving out a direction and purpose to its post-Brexit foreign policy. And it is this prioritisation that has opened up a new window for New Delhi and London to quickly finalise their FTA. It is a unique “now or never” moment and the two sides seem willing to seize it despite the challenges.

Professor Harsh V Pant is Director, Studies and Head of the Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He holds a joint appointment with the Department of Defence Studies and King’s India Institute as Professor of International Relations at King’s College London. 

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After achieving independence from British rule in 1947, India pursued socialist-minded development plans that emphasized self-reliance and state-led investment in heavy capital-intensive industries. The “license raj” was created in which most imports required government approval, most investment required government permission, and most foreign investment was barred. Permits were not the only barrier to imports. India’s average tariffs were unbelievably high by today’s standards: 123 percent on intermediate goods, 115 percent on capital goods, and 129 percent on consumer goods in the late 1980s.

India was essentially a closed economy. Its large but inefficient industrial sector supplied 95 percent of domestic demand for manufactured goods and 100 percent of all consumer goods, as a 1989 World Bank report noted. The rupee was hopelessly overvalued, which priced India’s goods out of world markets, keeping exports at just 5 percent of GDP. This meant that its foreign exchange earnings to purchase new technology and capital goods on world markets were severely constrained.

Under restricted trade, India succeeded in industrializing, but inefficiency and bureaucratic controls were rampant and economic growth was slow. The growth rate prior to reforms—so-called Hindu rate of growth—was just 3 to 4 percent overall and much slower on a per capita basis. As a result, poverty levels remained abysmally high.

CRISIS IN 1991 PROPELS SYSTEMIC CHANGE

While some tentative measures to open India’s market were taken in the 1980s, a severe balance of payments crisis finally forced the country’s policymakers to act in early 1991. Manmohan Singh, a distinguished economist, was appointed finance minister by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. Quoting Victor Hugo, Singh said in his July 24, 1991 budget speech, “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come”—the idea being that India should take its rightful place in the world economy. The compelling power of crisis finally propelled systemic change. Under Singh’s leadership, India devalued the rupee and moved toward a flexible exchange rate and current account convertibility. It extensively dismantled the license raj that had blocked imports and made exports uncompetitive, while unshackling constraints on domestic investment that limited competition. It also took steps to open the economy to foreign investment. Singh could not have done so without the political backing of Prime Minister Rao and a talented reform-minded team, including Commerce Minister P. Chidambaram, Principal Secretary Amar Nath Verma, and top civil servants, around him. This group prevailed despite howls of protest and attack from vested interests, intellectuals, and politicians.

Contrary to the perception of some observers, the trade reforms were not adopted because of pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Rather the reforms were “home-grown” with government officials, including Finance Minister Singh, recognizing that India’s problems were structural and fundamental changes to the import-substituting industrialization strategy were long overdue and clearly in India’s best economic interest. Some external pressure was undeniable and indeed helpful in continuing the process. In 1999, the reform of India’s trade policy received another boost when a World Trade Organization ruling required it to dismantle remaining quantitative restrictions on imports of consumers goods.

The result has been a marked increase in foreign trade, which has improved economic efficiency, giving consumers and businesses a wider choice of final goods and intermediate inputs to purchase. This in turn contributed to an acceleration in economic growth and a significant reduction in poverty.

RENEWED COMMITMENT NEEDED FOR FURTHER REFORMS

While India has continued to reform its policies since the early 1990s, including recent tax reforms by the Modi administration, the pace of reform is disquietingly slow. Red tape continues to stifle the economy, which has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, while insufficient attention has been paid to the pressing problems of disease control, pollution, rural poverty, and inadequate social services, such as education and health care. The country has been reluctant to partner with others in deeper trade agreements. As a result, India has missed important opportunities to continue to improve its economic performance. As a stark reminder of the stakes, the country’s once much poorer neighbor—Bangladesh—has continued to reform and has overtaken India in per capita income, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Many scholars like to focus on the deep structural factors affecting long-run economic development, such as geography and institutions, but we sometimes forget how farsighted political leadership and good economic policies can significantly influence the fate of nations. India is not alone in the world in finding these in short supply.

Douglas A. Irwin, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since February 2018, is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

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Over this period, India’s engagement with the outside world has evolved in response to domestic imperatives and to its external environment. India is engaged in a major reset at this time, moving from market-driven global integration to strategic trade and investment policy, what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has labelled self-reliance. What are the forces shaping India’s present external posture and what are the associated risks?

As the economist Pravin Krishna has observed, at its independence India inherited a relatively open trade regime and in 1948 was one of the 23 original ‘contracting parties’ to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO’s predecessor. India’s turn inward was facilitated a decade later when the GATT permitted ‘special and differential treatment’ for its poorer members.

Policy was then reinforced by geopolitics. Indira Gandhi of the Congress party became prime minister in 1966 and increasingly sided with the USSR in the Cold War in reaction to US support of Pakistan and China under President Richard Nixon. The outcome was economic stagnation but ‘strategic autonomy’ was preserved.

India’s return to openness in 1991 also occurred on the watch of a Congress-led government. Elections in 1989 led to rejection of the ruling Congress party led by Indira Gandhi’s son, Rajiv Gandhi. The inexperienced coalition government that took office was not in a position to handle a fiscal and balance of payments crisis. The crisis was exacerbated by external events: the collapse of the Soviet Union, an important trade and defence partner, and the first Gulf War. In the 1991 election campaign, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, as his mother had been seven years earlier.

The electoral outcome was a Congress-led coalition government headed by PV Narasimha Rao, the first Congress prime minister from outside the Nehru–Gandhi family. Rao’s technocratic finance minister, Manmohan Singh, advised the prime minister to seek support from the IMF. The program submitted to the IMF included comprehensive reforms covering trade, public finance, the exchange rate regime and capital markets. While prime minister Rao provided valuable political cover for these reforms, he was not inclined to mount a frontal challenge to the party’s centre-left orthodoxy External integration remained a largely technocratic project that came to be known as ‘reform by stealth’ which is why it remains subject to reversal.

Though weak, this impetus to liberalisation survived for the next two decades till the global financial crisis. There was substantial reduction in average applied industrial tariffs, though agriculture remained very highly protected. Liberalisation was largely unilateral, driven by a desire to emulate the export-led manufacturing success of the economies of Asia.

India was an active but unconvinced participant in the WTO’s Doha round launched in 2001. India argued — with some justification — that a new round was premature as there was unfinished business from the earlier Uruguay Round to be dealt with, particularly where agricultural trade was concerned. Washington’s retreat from committed multilateralism towards preferential agreements — first with Canada and later including Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — and its support for China’s WTO accession, together with the steady expansion of the European Community, undermined India’s faith in the multilateral order in the 1990s and early 2000s.

India remains by instinct a multilateral trading power, preferring to trade under the GATT’s most-favoured-nation rules. It actively uses the flexibility afforded by the gap between applied and bound tariffs, as well as trade remedies such as anti-dumping and safeguard measures in order to manage domestic lobbies, despite the uncertainty that such interventions create for domestic and international investors. In the first decade of the new century, it began to flirt with relatively shallow bilateral preferential trade agreements with a range of partners. It also agreed to participate in negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RCEP) in 2012 but withdrew in 2019.

By the size of its economy, India is now a consequential, though still poor, middle power. However, the share of manufacturing value added in GDP, needed to accommodate its rapidly growing labour force, has remained stagnant. Instead, the services sector has boomed. While the overall balance of payments has remained comfortable, its structure has been closer to that of an advanced country, with a large deficit in manufacturing trade balanced by surpluses in agriculture and services. The concentration of the manufacturing deficit in India’s trade with China has added to bilateral political and diplomatic tensions.

As in the 1960s and 1990s, a combination of external and domestic forces has again prompted a re-evaluation of India’s external engagement. The economic, medical, humanitarian and political dimensions of the COVID-19 scourge have exposed and reinforced weaknesses in India’s development trajectory, and may have contributed to a setback to Modi’s party in important recent state-level elections. China’s long-term economic success and its current political assertiveness are now shaping both the regional and global economic order as well as its bilateral relations with India.

In its post-COVID-19 recovery, India will wish to consolidate market access for its export of services to rich countries and to make access to the country’s growing market most attractive for those willing to bring the latest technology. The risk is that more active government intervention will get hijacked by powerful domestic lobbies as happened before. India is also refocusing on trade with its South Asian neighbours and investing greater energy in links with Europe and the United States. By contrast, an early return to the RCEP negotiations seems unlikely.

Suman Bery was most recently Shell’s Chief Economist, based in The Hague, The Netherlands. He is currently a Nonresident Fellow of the Brussels think-tank Bruegel, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

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What is clear is that India is being overwhelmed at the present time with India’s health care system struggling to handle the huge number of people needing assistance, with many hospitals unable to handle the case load, with acute shortages reported on oxygen, ICU beds and much more. See, e.g., The Financial Times, Editorial Board, The tragedy of India’s second wave, April 26, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/90281790-fb9e-468c-b3fa-c7549bd3bb39 (“The suffering of the Indian people in the country’s second wave of Covid-19 is a human tragedy on a vast scale. It is also a warning, and a danger, for the world. Many nations have been through dark times in the global pandemic; several with smaller populations still have higher death tolls. But with reports of people dying in the streets outside overwhelmed hospitals running short of oxygen, India today perhaps most closely resembles the worst-case scenarios painted when the virus was identified 16 months ago.”); New York Times, ‘This Is a Catastrophe.’ In India, Illness Is Everywhere, April 27, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/world/asia/India-delhi-covid-cases.html. The extent of human suffering from people not able to obtain timely care has been described by the Director-General of the World Health Organization as “beyond heartbreaking”. World Health Organization, Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 – 26 April 2021, 26 April 2021, https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19-26-april-2021.

Many countries, the WHO and business organizations and others are scrambling to provide assistance to India. See, e.g., MENAFN, Euronews, EU, UK and US offer support as COVID-19 ‘swallowing’ people in India, 27 April 2021, https://menafn.com/1101987528/EU-UK-and-US-Offer-Support-as-COVID-19-Swallowing-People-in-India; Politico, Von der Leyen: EU preparing ‘rapid’ assistance to COVID-hit India, April 26, 2021, https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-india-coronavirus-crisis-variant-asia-ursula-von-der-leyen/; U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, India COVID Crisis: How Businesses Can Help, April 27, 2021, https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/india-covid-crisis-how-businesses-can-help; Reuters, WHO steps up aid to India to stem COVID surge, 27 April 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/india/rush-hospitals-big-gatherings-worsen-india-covid-crisis-who-2021-04-27/..

In the United States, the Biden Administration has indicated it is providing assistance and yesterday released a fact sheet on actions being taken. See White House Briefing Room, FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Delivers Emergency COVID-19 Assistance for India, April 28, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-delivers-emergency-covid-19-assistance-for-india/. The fact sheet is copied below.

“Reflecting the United States’ solidarity with India as it battles a new wave of COVID-19 cases, the United States is delivering supplies worth more than $100 million in the coming days to provide urgent relief to our partners in India.  In addition, U.S. state governments, private companies, non-government organizations, and thousands of Americans from across the country have mobilized to deliver vital oxygen, related equipment, and essential supplies for Indian hospitals to support frontline health care workers and the people of India most affected during the current outbreak.  U.S. Government assistance flights will start arriving in India on Thursday, April 29 and will continue into next week.

“Just as India sent assistance to the United States when our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, the United States is determined to help India in its time of need.

“Immediate U.S. Emergency COVID-19 Assistance

“The United States is providing: 

“- Oxygen Support:  An initial delivery of 1,100 cylinders will remain in India and can be repeatedly refilled at local supply centers, with more planeloads to come.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also locally procured oxygen cylinders and will deliver them to support hospital systems in coordination with the Government of India.

“- Oxygen Concentrators: 1700 oxygen concentrators to obtain oxygen from ambient air, these mobile units provide options for flexible patient treatment.

“- Oxygen Generation Units (PSA Systems): Multiple large-scale units to support up to 20 patients each, and additional mobile units will provide an ability to target specific shortages. A team of U.S. experts will support these units, working hand-in-hand on the ground with Indian medical personnel. 

“- Personal Protective Equipment: 15 million N95 masks to protect both patients and Indian health care personnel. 

“- Vaccine-Manufacturing Supplies:  The U.S. has re-directed its own order of Astra Zeneca manufacturing supplies to India.  This will allow India to make over 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

“- Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs):  1 million rapid diagnostic tests – the same type used by the White House — to provide reliable results in less than 15 minutes to help identify and prevent community spread.     

“- Therapeutics:  The first tranche of a planned 20,000 treatment courses of the antiviral drug remdesivir to help treat hospitalized patients.

“- Public Health Assistance: U.S. CDC experts will work hand-in- hand with India’s experts in the following areas: laboratory, surveillance and epidemiology, bioinformatics for genomic sequencing and modeling, infection prevention and control, vaccine rollout, and risk communication.

“U.S. Support for India from the Outset of the Pandemic 

“The United States and India have closely worked together to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.  U.S. COVID-19 assistance has reached more than 9.7 million Indians across more than 20 states and union territories, providing life-saving treatments, disseminating public health messages to local communities; strengthening case-finding and surveillance; and mobilizing innovative financing mechanisms to bolster emergency preparedness: 

“- Partnered with more than 1,000 Indian healthcare facilities to strengthen preparedness, including training of over 14,000 people on infection prevention and control.

“- Helped keep more than 213,000 frontline workers safe — including risk mitigation training for doctors, nurses, midwives, community volunteers, sanitation workers, and others who are actively responding to COVID-19 in India.

“- Launched joint public messaging with UNICEF on COVID prevention that has reached more than 84 million people.

“- Provided 200 state-of-the-art ventilators to 29 healthcare facilities in 15 states to care for critically-ill COVID-19 patients.

“U.S.-India Health Partnership: Seven Decades Strong

“- For seventy years, U.S. public health experts from across the government, including USAID, HHS, CDC, FDA, and NIH, have worked in partnership with Indian officials to improve the health of India’s most vulnerable communities and the well-being of its people. 

“- Over the last 20 years, U.S. foreign assistance to India has exceeded $2.8 billion, including more than $1.4 billion for health care. 

“- The United States, India, and other partners have worked together to reduce new HIV infections by 37 percent between 2010 and 2019.

“- Since 1998, the United States and India have worked together to combat tuberculosis (TB) through improved patient-centered diagnosis, treatment and prevention, helping treat 15 million people with the disease.

“- In the last five years, the United States has helped 40 million pregnant women receive vital health information and services.

“- The United States, in partnership with the Government of India and World Health Organization, has supported initiatives at the District, State and National level to build frontline disease detection capacity.

“- The United States and India are working together to advance global health security and fight outbreaks before they become pandemics.”

Conclusion

India is a critical part of the global effort to vaccinate the world both with vaccines developed within India and with vaccines (e.g., AstraZeneca and Novavax) that are licensed for production in India with large commitments to supply COVAX for distribution to low- and middle-income countries and with other vaccines licensed from other countries (China and Russia). The immediate challenges in India has shifted the focus of the Indian government and its vaccine producers to supply almost exclusively for the Indian market while India struggles through the current surge in new cases and hospitalizations. The focus of the world on the need to help India is an interesting departure from the discussion of vaccine distribution based on population that has dominated focus through March.

Many parts of the world have been able to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control to a large extent and hence have relatively few COVID-19 cases. Other countries — the U.S., India, Brazil, the EU countries and UK — have had far less success in controlling the spread of COVID-19 and have recorded very large numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

In a prior post, I reviewed that if one looks at percent of vaccinations compared to the percent of COVID-19 cases, there has been better matching for many countries (U.S., EU, UK, India) while a few major vaccine producers have much larger vaccinations as a percent of global vaccinations compared to the share of global COVID-19 cases they have. See April 18, 2021, WTO’s April 14th virtual meeting to review COVID-19 vaccine availability, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2021/04/18/wtos-april-14th-virtual-meeting-to-review-covid-19-vaccine-availability/.

Looking at current data, China has achieved the largest number of vaccinations — 235,976,000 vaccinations or 21.82% of global totals til April 28, 2021) — but a very low percent of global COVID-19 cases — 102,384 cases or 0.07% of global cases. The U.S. has the largest number of cases and second largest number of vaccinations (21.79% of cases; 21.69% of vaccinations). India has the second largest number of cases and the third largest number of vaccinations (11.61% of cases; 13.86% of vaccinations). The EU (27 countries) has 20.46% of COVID-19 cases (2nd largest if looking at the 27 countries together) and 12.75% of vaccinations. The United Kingdom has 2.99% of cases and 4.39% of vaccinations. Brazil has 9.75% of cases (3rd highest for an individual country) and 4.17% of vaccinations.

Both China and India are major vaccine producers and have comparable populations. But China has had only 0.6% of the COVID-19 cases that India has had, but has 157.45% of the vaccinations that India has accomplished. Vaccination data is from Bloomberg, More than 1.08 Billion Shots Given: Cover-19 Tracker, updated April 28, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/.

The problems India is facing are daunting and emphasize the need for the global community to respond to emergencies as they arise while global production of vaccines continue to ratchet up in the coming months. That doesn’t mean that efforts to roll out vaccines to all countries is not an important initiative (COVAX has now shipped more than 48 million doses to 120 countries and various countries are shipping vaccines to ow- and middle-income countries outside of COVAX). But pandemics do not wreak havoc uniformly across the world. Fires need to be addressed urgently while capacities are increased to deal with all needs. The last several weeks have shown India to be suffering such a “fire”. Diverting resources from other parts of the world to India makes sense at the moment. Brazil’s fire continues as well and undoubtedly needs more attention.

While vaccines will help get the world out of the pandemic, all countries need to be vigilant on the non-vaccine tools available to minimize the spread of the pandemic within markets until there is sufficient vaccine capacity to address all needs — capacity that should be here by the end of 2021.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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Economist Jagdish Bhagwati predicted that global labour mobility would be the engine of twenty-first-century growth, just as the movement of goods drove economic growth in the nineteenth century and that of capital dominated twentieth-century development^[2]. The movement of people across borders is such a potentially powerful engine for development, that were it to be liberalised further, developing country incomes would quadruple and global GDP would double^[3]. However, the political contestation around international migration has hampered its potential, earning it the epithet of “the last bastion of protectionism”^[4].

This is especially so for unskilled labour migration — relatively speaking, developed countries tend to welcome skilled migrants (albeit, to an extent) but consider unskilled workers an economic, security and cultural threat^[5]. This has unfortunately tempered the “irresistible forces” propelling migration, primarily that ageing prosperous economies require labour and poor demographically-endowed countries need to export surplus labour^[6]. India is at the centre of this debate — it is among the world’s top origin-countries for migrants, with its international migrants more than doubling over the past 25 years^[7]. It is also one of the top destinations for international migrants — in 2015, India hosted the 12th largest immigrant population globally^[8].

Migration is now recognised as a key function of sovereign diplomacy, going beyond traditional statecraft to ensuring well-governed labour migration, and the training and welfare of migrant workers^[9]. But global labour mobility today is no longer restricted to the physical migration of labour. The forces of globalisation, coupled with technological shifts, are transforming work and production structures. The dematerialisation of the world economy has contributed to the rise of “virtual migration,” a flexible, disembodied labour supply across borders — a form of “migration without migrating” — that is coming to define the new labour economy^[10]. In his book Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalisation, A. Aneesh draws a distinction between “body-shopping” Bodog Poker (hiring skilled workers who work for corporations overseas through sub-contracting practices) and “online programming” (skilled workers living in their home countries and working through the internet for corporations). The latter has received a fillip due to accelerating digital transformation and the shift to remote-first modes of working, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a large chunk of its workforce part of this ecosystem, India is the world’s largest digital labour supplier^[11]. This phenomenon therefore deserves a place in India’s imagination of its economic diplomacy for the future.

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The international mobility landscape is in a state of flux at present, precipitated by accelerating digital transformation and the changing contours of work, and made urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic’s tumultuous impact. This section is an exploration of evolving labour market trends that are expected to have an impact on Indian economic diplomacy’s agenda for promoting global labour mobility. 

The COVID-19 pandemic

It would be remiss to discuss global trends affecting international labour mobility without mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic — historically, one of the biggest shocks to global migration^[12]. The pandemic has prompted protectionist restrictions against the movement of people globally. Remittance flows globally declined by 6 percent year-on-year in Q2 of FY2020^[13], and are likely to fall even more sharply — the World Bank has predicted a 13 percent decline in global flows in 2020^[14], and a 23 percent decline in remittance flows to India^[15].

The pandemic’s impact on the labour market has been heterogeneous. Research suggests that migrant workers form a critical chunk of ‘essential services,’ such as healthcare and care work, that have been instrumental in fighting the pandemic across the world^[16]. In some countries like the UK and Germany, migrants have earned considerable public favour by holding up their economies as ‘essential workers’ (Germany chartered flights to bring in agricultural labour). However, others, such as the US and the Gulf (two key destinations for Indian emigrants in particular), have put up protectionist barriers that are unlikely to be relaxed in the near term^[17].

The pandemic will also likely magnify existing issues that had begun plaguing the migration economy, such as growing xenophobia and protectionism. A surge of xenophobia is already being seen in the Gulf countries, where the spread of the virus is being attributed to unskilled migrant workers and employers are being warned not to hire expatriate workers^[18]. Protectionism is also likely to rise in this context; services under mode 4 — the presence or movement of natural persons — have always been the least liberalised of all modes of labour supply (see Figure 1). The pandemic is likely to reverse some of the meagre progress made in this regard^[19]. As a service-led economy, India has long had labour mobility at the top of its trade negotiations agenda. However, there has been little appetite for mode 4 liberalisation in global trade deliberations, much to its discontent. The multilateral Trade in Services Agreement, launched in 2013 for this purpose and to which India was not a party, has also stalled^[20]. India’s service exports continue mainly via mode 1 (cross-border supply)^[21].

Figure 1: World Trade in Commercial Services by Mode of Supply, 2017

Restructuring labour markets and changing labour force requirements

The forces set into motion by the pandemic will likely cause a restructuring of labour markets. For one, the bulk outflow of migrants driven by the pandemic is unlikely to be reversed in equal proportions. Second, the threat of the transmission of infection may keep country borders closed for immigration for a considerable period, especially in developed states where vaccination will arrive first. Third, the recessions and employment crises witnessed across the world will also pressurise countries to put their citizens first, thereby hurting the cause of migration and development. Lastly, technological shifts will increase the demand for high-skilled workers more generally across the board.

The pandemic’s impact on the labour market will be heterogeneous, and it is critical to gauge where opportunities and challenges lie. The Gulf and the US have traditionally been the major destinations for Indian emigrant workers. In its May 2020 report, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that six million jobs will be lost in the Arab region due to COVID-19 and the oil shock^[23]. The crisis is also likely to intensify the Gulf Cooperation Council’s ‘nationalisation policies,’ instated to create jobs for locals and reduce dependence on international migration^[24]. Bahrain has already announced that jobs left vacant by migrants during the pandemic are to be filled by locals^[25]. However, nationalisation policies are unlikely to have an extreme impact on the need for migrant workers in the short term^[26]; for now, demand for migrants is expected to persist in the construction, care and hospitality sectors^[27]. The region is looking to expand its tertiary-educated talent pool by 50 percent by 2030^[28], and in the longer term, labour requirements in the Gulf are expected to gradually move towards a smaller number of migrants with superior skills. Digital transformation coupled with the climate crisis is also likely to create demand in new sectors — for instance, the energy efficiency sector is expected to be the single largest generator of new employment in the UAE and is estimated to create more than 65,000 jobs by 2030^[29].

US-India relations mostly flourished under former US President Donald Trump, except on the issue of immigration. His temporary ban on several work visa categories hurt Indian H1B-visa workers disproportionately, and stringent conditions for the H1B visas, such as prohibitively high application fees, led India to file a case against the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)^[30]. The restrictions are expected to be relaxed under US President Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign promises indicate that he will work to eliminate country-based quotas for high-skilled visas and exempt overseas PhD holders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics from visa caps, which is good news for India. Worryingly, however, Biden has remained conspicuously silent on the subject of the WTO and US tariffs^[31].

In addition to keeping an eye on trends in the above regions, the Indian government must also turn its attention to other key geographies that have considerable potential in this regard. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are estimated to need 400 million additional workers by 2050 to hold up their social security systems^[32]. The UK has recently indicated that it will be open to an “unlimited number of highly-skilled Indian workers” from 2021 onwards^[33]. Promisingly, the European Union (EU) is also assessing the prospect of liberalisation of both skilled and unskilled migration. An ILO report suggested that there are higher shortages in the skilled sector in Europe — medicine and engineering being two key areas — even as requirements differ by country and must be assessed accordingly. The mobility of science and technology professionals could, therefore, be a key area for India-EU negotiations^[34]. The EU has acknowledged the pressing need for labour — and the failure of migration regimes thus far — to put in a framework for the recruitment of low-skilled workers in a way that reduces irregular and illegal migration^[35]. The Indian government must note this development, and reinvigorate efforts to work with the EU to a constructive dialogue in this area. The India-EU Declaration of Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (2016) is a commendable step towards this goal. Future initiatives must focus on key areas of interest like student mobility and the governance and prevention of irregular migration (especially from North India to the EU, which will require the cooperation of the relevant Indian states)^[36]. Additionally, Japan has recently begun liberalising its stance on immigration in recognition of the needs of its ageing population, and foreign workers in the country have doubled since 2013. Japan has fast-tracked permanent residency for skilled workers and, importantly, also passed a law to expand the quantum of blue-collar visas and provide blue-collar workers a path to permanent residency^[37].

There has also been some speculation recently that the shift to remote, virtual work during the pandemic may provide a fillip to “virtual migration” and the possibility for skilled workers to work across borders more fluently. However, at present, the ILO estimates that only about 18 percent of workers globally are in sectors that can work effectively from home, and have access to a conducive environment and infrastructure to do so. Therefore, this phenomenon may have a more muted impact on international labour mobility than expected^[38].

The future of work

What will the restructuring of labour markets due to emerging technologies likely look like? The deployment of emerging technologies is now causing a ‘hollowing out’ of the global workforce, with middle-skill jobs beginning to vanish. It has also created a ‘skill bias’ — high-skilled labour is in greater demand and has been more resilient and fared better during the pandemic^[39]. White-collar non-routine occupations are also relatively more immune from automation, even though susceptibility to automation remains frustratingly difficult to predict and plan for^[40]. In the long-term, this skill bias is expected to cause a large-scale shift in the structure of demand for labour at the expense of developing countries’ large pools of unskilled labour.

In their book Ghost Work, Mary Gary and Siddharth Suri have pointed to a more recent phenomenon that is emblematic of the effect of digital transformation on labour markets — the rise of a near-invisible global workforce that has emerged to power the platform economy^[41]. The book refers to a virtual, high-skilled globally-distributed workforce that performs flexible, task-based work and reports to an application programming interface (API). India is at the core of this phenomenon, and is rapidly becoming the artificial intelligence (AI) backend office of the world^[42].

Gray and Suri estimate that by 2055, 60 percent of today’s global employment will have converted into ghost work^[43]. This may well happen sooner; with regular jobs disappearing during the global pandemic-induced recession, their ranks have likely been vastly inflated. The size of this workforce is currently difficult to estimate, as the nature of their work is practically invisible. While this type of work has provided opportunities in the form of flexible ‘virtual migration’ and the ability to work for employers across the world, it has also extracted a high cost. Digital blue-collar workers face the problem of plenty — supply of workers vastly exceeds demand for their services — which has squeezed their wages and bargaining power, and led to a feeling of alienation and the loss of job security and mobility. Collective action is harder for them; as the nature of their work is disintermediated, they are dispersed all over the globe and view each other as competition^[44]. The cross-border, invisible and informal nature of this work has created tremendous regulatory challenges. The role of the state must first extend to efforts towards making these labour supply chains visible, by defining platform work clearly and creating comprehensive databases for these workers. India’s Union Budget 2021 has taken a laudable step towards that end by provisioning for a minimum wage across all categories of workers, which will also be tremendously beneficial for these workers if implemented well. The role of economic diplomacy in this regard is crucial — regulation of ‘ghost work’ requires international collaboration and alignment of regulatory practices as workforces are dispersed all over the world.

Recalibrate India’s economic diplomacy

In light of the changing global outlook, it is imperative for India to recalibrate its economic diplomacy framework, to enable its advocacy for global labour mobility in the future. This section shall proceed issue-wise and attempt to come up with a broad roadmap for this purpose.

A creative and pragmatic approach

India needs to rethink its approach towards engaging in debates on the future of global labour mobility. India has been disappointed time and again at the WTO — most recently in 2017, when it tabled its draft negotiating text called the Trade Facilitation Agreement for Services^[45] — and regional fora such as at the recently concluded negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)^[46]. India’s decreasing manufacturing competitiveness has led it to become increasingly defensive in trade negotiations with regard to market access in areas like agriculture, retail and dairy, making it difficult for the country to bargain for greater services liberalisation, as the RCEP negotiations demonstrated. In such a situation, it is patient and creative diplomacy, rather than an offensive stance, that may enable India’s cause.

One solution is to identify bilateral opportunities for partnership rather than multilateral engagement — an idea that has already yielded dividends for India. Among the key barriers for partnerships on global mobility are a lack of trust, concerns around the economic and security-related domestic impact of migration, and (now) health risks. Therefore, while negotiating, India will need to delve into several issues, such as those related to liability for overstay, illegal migration and the enforcement of temporary guest worker rules, and offer to assume some legal responsibility for monitoring and compliance as well^[47].

India also needs to think creatively to carve out greater policy space for itself in negotiations. One solution advanced by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations is the introduction of start-up visas. This will serve to attract innovative talent to the country and also demonstrate India’s willingness to reciprocate on high-skilled labour mobility liberalisation, shifting the country’s policy stance to one more inclined to engage and compromise rather than just demand^[48]. This would also enable India’s diaspora policy, and provide a route for inviting greater diaspora participation in domestic development. While focusing on bilateral engagement, India must continue to push on the multilateral front as well, and remain engaged with the WTO and forums like RCEP, with a view to build consensus on the growing need for well-designed labour mobility channels.

Invest in a capable workforce

A domestic as well as an emigration prerogative, India needs to invest in enhancing the capabilities of its workforce. Skills requirements are not a monolith, and neither is the future of work. Skilling programmes need to address the starting points of learning, for what is a highly segmented workforce.

A workforce of the future needs to be agile and move fluently between occupations. Basic digital fluency will be critical, even as a section of the population needs to be trained in higher-order technological skills. Skill-biased technological change will create greater demand in the areas of AI, machine learning, robotics, big data and natural language processing across the board. Soft skills, meanwhile, are often underemphasised but will be critical to every profession^[49].

India’s National Education Policy has encouragingly aligned vocational education and apprenticeships with formal educational attainments^[50]. The government has done well to engage multiple agencies in migration governance for the purpose of capability-building — with the Ministry of Labour and Employment and Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship taking on key roles. However, the problem of skill mismatch remains high, bodog sportsbook review as is the challenge of skill recognition across borders. Addressing this will require an integrated policy and certification framework, put into place collaboratively by sending and receiving countries^[51]. It also requires efforts towards strengthening India’s Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) programme as a priority — much of India’s workforce, contrary to popular perception, is already skilled but unrecognised and uncertified^[52][53]. Technology-based solutions can also make intermediation more transparent — online job platforms, skills verification and tests and the verification of contracts will make job matching more efficient^[54].

Capability-building will require a tailored policy. For example, to promote semi-skilled and unskilled worker migration to the EU, India — with the support of EU policymakers — must create training and certification programmes oriented towards EU standards, targeted towards sectors like hospitality, healthcare, construction and care work, which are likely to see high demand^[55].

An updated diaspora policy

Academic and policy discussions have largely tended to focus on the impact of diaspora in their host countries, relatively few studies focus on the political and economic impact on the countries of origin, due to paucity of data. India must look at this phenomenon closely as well^[56]. Unskilled migration usually has a net positive impact on the country of origin, however, skilled migration has both negative and positive effects.

The negative effect that India needs to pay particular attention to is brain-drain, which has arguably had a tangible impact on the quality of Indian universities. India has been a “net exporter of talent,”^[57] which matters for economic diplomacy as well as development, as the country’s domestic fortunes are inextricably tied to its international exercise of influence. This problem requires serious consideration. Labour mobility agreements can be designed to promote this — we can move training to the country of origin and provision for a net ‘brain gain.’ The Australia Pacific Training Coalition (ATPC), a skilling drive to meet the region’s labour requirements, provides a case study for this^[58]. The ATPC has a ‘home’ track and an ‘away’ track, and the ‘away’ track provides language, digital literacy, cultural training, RPL and other necessary work abroad training as well. Crucially, it also has a programme for investing in the return and reintegration of workers through ‘Full Circle Programmes,’ including a promising means to access platforms while away, to support their RPL applications, to know what kind of work is possible and available for returnees.

The attitude of the government towards domestic development and addressing push factors for emigrants often matters immensely for its success with diaspora engagement and reverse migration strategies^[59]. Additionally, India also needs to find more creative and deeper-rooted ways of engaging its diaspora in development initiatives. A successful policy will recognise that the diaspora is not a homogeneous category and must be seen as distinct categories — such as differentiating between non-resident Indians, and ‘older’ migrants who migrated early as distinct from recent migrants. Diaspora policies must then be tailored according to their relevance for these different groups^[60].

A large chunk of the Indian diaspora is highly skilled and diaspora organisations can therefore act as effective mentoring networks and help complement skilling initiatives^[61]. But to be effective, diaspora policy must be more welfare-oriented and empathetic in tone and content^[62]. India needs a migration policy that extends to the treatment of overseas Indian workers. The pandemic has put a spotlight on the shabby, vulnerable living conditions of migrant populations in many parts of the world. This is a failure of the international migration governance framework and further evidence of the urgent need for national economic diplomacy to address this glaring vacuum in policy^[63].

An adaptive and empathetic policy framework

The rising complexity of economic diplomacy requires bureaucracies to design their frameworks to be more adaptive, reasonably decentralised and with strong inbuilt feedback mechanisms^[64]. The necessity of feedback mechanisms is evidenced by India’s experience with migration governance in the Gulf. India-mandated minimum referral wages are facing implementation challenges, due to contract substitution in the destination country (contract substitution refers to an informal practice where foreign workers sign a contract before they migrate, but are compelled to accept a different, weaker contract on arrival in the destination country)^[65]. Indian embassies could act as feedback nodes for policy in this regard. A plurilateral approach including all stakeholders, such as employer and employee organisations, and greater inter-ministerial coordination will promote more effective governance.^[66] The need for domain expertise in India’s bureaucracy^[67], and better systems for retaining and creating institutional knowledge within ministries^[68], have often been brought up as areas of critical reform.

Adaptive policy could identify and plug the existence of policy vacuums that impede governance. One such vacuum is wage-theft, especially in the Gulf, where workers are denied their dues by companies in violation of their terms of contract. The e-Migrate platform instituted by the Indian government to coordinate across stakeholders has helped mitigate this problem and could be improved through integration with labour platforms in Gulf countries. Setting up mechanisms for Indian workers to air grievances could also help — the Indian repatriation form to be filled by migrants during COVID-19 did not provide any space for workers to discuss their grievances and seek redressal^[69].

Evidence-based adaptive policy also requires quality data. There is a need for more cross-country, comparative data sets and more data on migration flows and the enforcement of labour laws to realise the vision for a 2030-ready economic diplomacy framework for India.

There is an urgent need for Indian diplomacy to take a more welfare-oriented and rights-based approach towards emigration. India could begin by deliberating upon transitional justice mechanisms to address the immediate grievances and claims of repatriated workers due to the pandemic. India also needs to take this opportunity to push for broader reforms. The pandemic has prompted Qatar to dismantle the ‘Kafala’ system (a legal framework defining employer-employee relations, which has become increasingly exploitative)^[70] and some other Gulf countries have expanded access to free healthcare and mandated private companies to provide accommodation to migrants. Governing return migration flows will now require coordination from both sending and receiving countries, and India must take this opportunity to co-build a welfare framework for migrant workers in cooperation with Gulf governments, for mutual benefit^[71].

The rights-based framework must also extend to immigrants received by India. Indian immigrants migrate irregularly and are often unrecorded, which is why there is a paucity of literature and lack of reliable figures on immigrant migration flows^[72]. The conduct of India as a destination country is a critical component for economic diplomacy, even as it is beyond this paper’s scope.

Upcoming emigrant bill

India’s draft emigrant bill, yet to be passed by parliament, will replace the Emigration Act of 1983 as the overarching and only legal instrument responsible for dealing with emigration and migrant welfare. However, the current draft bill excludes many, such as the families of emigrant workers and irregular and undocumented migrants. This will hurt India’s bilateral and multilateral efforts towards promoting labour mobility. The bill also neglects to focus on migrant rights in their destination country and the governance of return migration^[73].

In a bulletin released in 2007, the World Health Organisation stated that “international human mobility is factorial to the globalisation of infectious and chronic diseases” and that it poses a national security threat^[74]. This is now evident. India’s draft emigrant bill makes no mention of mobility during crises and does not consider the importance of social security and health insurance for its migrants. The pandemic has demonstrated the urgency to work towards greater awareness and access to health and welfare services, and a transnational health framework that is inclusive of migrants. While including these provisions in its own legal framework, India must also work to include this request in its bilateral labour agreements^[75].

Conclusion 

Global labour mobility is a critical instrument for promoting India’s development aims, and therefore features increasingly prominently in its economic diplomacy agenda as well. This paper has put forth two broad sets of arguments. One, it has elucidated the changing global outlook for labour mobility considering the pandemic and the evolving future of work. Two, it has provided a roadmap for India to recalibrate its economic diplomacy given this shifting outlook and has provided policy recommendations towards this end.

The subject of international labour mobility has often been averse to international cooperation, with origin and destination countries taking on adversarial stances, resulting in a fragmented and reactive approach to migration. However, a collaborative framework born out of pragmatism and an understanding of changing global trends and common challenges is both possible and desirable to leverage the gains from global labour mobility mutually^[76].

Endnotes

^[1] “Global labour mobility is in India’s interest,” The Hindu, 7 May 2018.

^[2] Basant Kumar Potnuru and Vishishta Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration: Historical perspectives, future challenges, and policy imperatives,” IIMB Management Review, 27, no. 1 (March 2015), 35–43.

^[3] “Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP): Helping Connect International Labor Markets,” Center for Global Development.

^[4] Manjula Luthria, “Three Funerals and a Wedding: Resetting the way we work on migration,” World Bank Blogs, 12 September 2013.

^[5] Lant Pritchett, Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility(Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2006).

^[6] “Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)”

^[7] Phillip Connor, “India is a top source and destination for world’s migrants,” Pew Research Center, 3 March 2017.

^[8] Connor, “India is a top source and destination for world’s migrants”

^[9] Gerasimos Tsourapas and Fiona B. Adamson, “How countries use ‘migration diplomacy’ to pursue their own interests,” The Conversation, 4 February 2019.

^[10] Rina Ghose, “Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization. A. Aneesh,” Urban Geography 28, no. 5 (2007): 511–12.

^[11] Sangeet Jain, “Reimagining work and welfare for the Indian economy,” Observer Research Foundation, 27 October 2020.

^[12] Delphine Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration,” Financial Times, 19 October 2020.

^[13] Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration”

^[14] “World Bank Predicts Sharpest Decline of Remittances in Recent History,” World Bank, 22 April 2020.

^[15] “Remittances to India likely to decline by 23% in 2020 due to Covid-19: World Bank,” India Today, 23 April 2020.

^[16] “Labour migration at the time of COVID-19,” International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization, 16 April 2020.

^[17] Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration”

^[18] Huda Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies,” Arab Reform Initiative, 10 November 2020.

^[19] Pralok Gupta, “There is no appetite in the world for Mode 4 commitments,” Trade Promotion Council of India, 18 July 2019.

^[20] Linda Yueh, “Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century: Principles and Challenges,” LSE IDEAS Blog, 27 August 2020.

^[21] “Global services trade: What makes India different,” The Economic Times, 24 August 2019.

^[22] World Trade Organization, World Trade Report 2019: The Future of Services Trade, World Trade Organization, 2019.

^[23] Rejimon Kuttappan, “Indian migrant workers in Gulf countries are returning home without months of salary owed to them,” The Hindu, 19 September 2020.

^[24] Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies”

^[25] Rhea Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic: What Can We Learn from India’s Treatment of Migrants in the Gulf?” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 55, Issue No. 32-33 (8 August 2020).

^[26] Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies”

^[27] Froilan T. Malit, Jr and George Naufal, “Future of Work: Skills and Migration in the Middle East” (presentation, Inter-Regional Experts Forum on Skills and Migration in the South Asia-Middle East Corridor).

^[28] “The Future of Jobs and Skills in the Middle East and North Africa: Preparing the Region for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” World Economic Forum, May 2017.

^[29] “The Future of Jobs and Skills in the Middle East and North Africa”

^[30] Gupta, “There is no appetite in the world for Mode 4 commitments”

^[31] Devirupa Mitra, “What a Biden Administration Could Do – Or Not Do – for India’s Key Priorities,” The Wire, 8 November 2020.

^[32] Rebekah Smith and Cassandra Zimmer, “The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Probably Not Mark the End of the Kafala System in the Gulf,” Center for Global Development, 28 October 2020.

^[33] “Britain has a good news for Indians who want to migrate to UK,” The Economic Times, 17 January 2019.

^[34] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[35] Stefano Bertozz ed., Opening Europe’s doors to unskilled and low-skilled workers: A practical handbook (Bureau of European Policy Advisors, 2010).

^[36] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[37] Noah Smith, “Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration,” Bloomberg Opinion, 23 May 2019.

^[38] Janine Berg, Florence Bonnet and Sergei Soares, “Working from home: Estimating the worldwide potential,” VoxEU & CEPR, 11 May 2020.

^[39] Sangeet Jain, “The coronavirus has hurtled unprepared economies into the future of work,” Observer Research Foundation, 29 April 2020.

^[40] Daniel Susskind, A world without work: Technology, automation and how we should respond (UK: Penguin UK, 2020).

^[41] Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost work: How to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass (Boston: Eamon Dolan Books, 2019).

^[42] Abrieu Ramiro, Martin Rapetti, Urvashi Aneja and Krish Chetty, “How to Promote Worker Wellbeing in the Platform Economy in the Global South,” G20 Insights, 7 May 2019.

^[43] Ann Toews, “‘Ghost Work’ in Modi’s India: Exploitation or Job Creation?” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 28 June 2019.

^[44] Ramiro et al., “How to Promote Worker Wellbeing in the Platform Economy in the Global South”

^[45] D. Ravi Kanth, “India sets the stage for a clash with US, EU at WTO,” The Mint, 1 March 2017.

^[46] Surupa Gupta and Sumit Ganguly, “Why India Refused to Join the World’s Biggest Trading Bloc,” Foreign Policy, 23 November 2020.

^[47] Pritam Banerjee, “Fixing India’s Economic Diplomacy,” The Diplomat, 16 June 2017.

^[48] Arpita Mukherjee, Avantika Kapoor and Angana Parashar Sarma, “High-Skilled Labour Mobility in an Era of Protectionism: Foreign Startups and India,” ICRIER Working Paper, July 2018.

^[49] Sangeet Jain, “The National Education Policy 2020: A policy for the times,” Observer Research Foundation, 6 August 2020.

^[50] Ministry of Human Research Development, National Education Policy 2020.

^[51] Panudda Boonpala and Max Tunon, “Quality Not Quantity – It’s Time To Re-Think Overseas Employment,” UN Blogs.

^[52] Laura Sili, “Technology and the future of work in developing economies,” International Growth Centre, 20 March 2019.

^[53] Yueh, “Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century”

^[54] Steffen Hertog, “The future of migrant work in the GCC: literature review and a research and policy agenda,” London School of Economics and Political Science (paper presented at Fifth Abu Dhabi Dialogue Ministerial Consultation of Abu Dhabi Dialogue Among the Asian Labor Sending and Receiving Countries, 16-17 October 2019).

^[55] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[56] Devesh Kapur, Diaspora Development and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

^[57] Devesh Kapur, “Migration and India,” Centre for the Advanced Study of India, 30 August 2010.

^[58] Helen Dempster and Andie Fong Toy, “How Has COVID-19 Affected APTC’s Efforts to Promote Labor Mobility in the Pacific?” Centre for Global Development, 13 July 2020.

^[59] Ashley J. Tellis, “Troubles Aplenty: Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next Indian Government,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 20 May 2019.

^[60] Alwun Didar Singh, “Working with the Diaspora for Development Policy Perspectives from India,” CARIM-India Research Report 2012/25, Fiesole, European University Institute and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2012.

^[61] Mukherjee et al., “High-Skilled Labour Mobility in an Era of Protectionism”

^[62] Parama Sinha Palit, “Modi and the Indian Diaspora,” RSIS Commentary, no. 241 (28 November 2019).

^[63] Nithin Coca, “How can we better protect migrant workers in the next global crisis?” Devex, 24 September 2020.

^[64] “Building bureaucracies that adapt to complexity” (webinar, Overseas Development Institute, 30 November 2020).

^[65] Boonpala and Tunon, “Quality Not Quantity”

^[66] “Global labour mobility is in India’s interest,” The Hindu, 7 May 2018.

^[67] Arjun Bhargava, “Economic diplomacy is now core component of India’s foreign policy,” Observer Research Foundation.

^[68] Banerjee, “Fixing India’s Economic Diplomacy”

^[69] Kuttappan, “Indian migrant workers in Gulf countries are returning home without months of salary owed to them”

^[70] Kali Robinson, “What Is the Kafala System?” Council on Foreign Relations, 20 November 2020.

^[71] Smith and Zimmer, “The Covid-19 pandemic will probably not mark the end of the Kafala system in the Gulf”

^[72] UNESCAP, In-migration: Situation Report, UNESCAP.

^[73] S. Irudaya Rajan, Varun Aggarwal and Priyansha Singh, “Draft Emigration Bill 2019: The Missing Links,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 54, Issue No. 30 (27 July 2019).

^[74] Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic”

^[75] Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic”

^[76] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

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All of these forces have led WTO Members to focus energies on bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements and to start a process of so-called Joint Statement Initiatives to let countries desiring to address new or uncovered issues do so.

With the WTO finally having appointed a new Director-General whose priorities include addressing longstanding issues, but also achieving progress on the Joint Statement Initiatives — including digital trade/e-commerce and others — and with the European Union’s 18 February trade policy paper and Annex dealing with WTO reform and indicating the importance of flexibility for bringing open plurilaterals into the WTO, India and South Africa have filed a communication for discussion at the March 1-2, 2021 General Council meeting challenging the “legal status of Joint Statement Initiatives and their negotiated outcomes”.  The Indian and South African paper is embedded below.

The paper from India and South Africa raises interesting points about existing WTO provisions for modifications of existing agreements and for adding plurilateral agreements and other issues. But the real question for the WTO is whether updating of rules and coverage of technological change and global developments will happen within or outside of the WTO. No issue describes this better than digital trade. Existing WTO rules don’t really address digital trade which has become increasingly important for all countries. While the WTO has had digital trade on its radar since 1998, there has been no meaningful progress within the WTO on multilateral rules.  The Joint Statement Initiative on digital trade started in Buenos Aires in late 2017 is an effort by some WTO Members to develop rules for those willing to participate that address important issues affecting digital trade today.  The JSI on e-commerce presently has 86 WTO Members participating in the negotiations and is making progress towards potential results as early as the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in late 2021. Embedded below is the 2017 Joint Statement Initiative, the December 2020 Joint Statement on E-Commerce and the December draft text.

Conclusion

The paper from India and South Africa may reflect a desire to have an early discussion of what additional flexibilities are needed in the WTO to permit easier inclusion of plurilateral agreements within the WTO. The paper could also be an effort to add leverage to obtaining focus on issues of importance to India and South Africa. It could also be a signal that two Members who historically have had problems with many liberalization efforts are simply looking to lock the WTO down from timely reform and rule updates at least among the willing. If so, the WTO’s drift to irrelevance will continue and solutions outside of the WTO will become the main focus of global trade rules.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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China’s 2020 boom in exports is beyond a statistical blip, according to analysis by Trade Data Monitor, the world’s top source of export and import statistics. The country is now exporting more goods per month in dollar value than any country in global economic history.

The bonanza is driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. As hundreds of millions of people in the world’s richest economies migrate their work home from the office, they are doing so with China-made computers, phone, routers and data storage units. Overall, exports of high-tech products leapt 21.1% to $86.1 billion.

Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and public health officials are buying medical equipment they need, such as ventilators, face masks, and now many key ingredients for mass-produced vaccines, from China. Exports of medical devices increased 38.4% to $1.6 billion.

As the rest of the world has had to shut down major sectors of the economy to cope with Covid-19, China has kept its factories open since the spring. China’s top customer: the U.S., which imported $52 billion of goods, up 45.7% from November 2019.

To be sure, China’s hot streak won’t last forever. Markets will get saturated. Countries will slow down their purchases of medical supplies as populations get vaccinated. The yuan has been appreciated in value for much of the decade. Chinese wages have been rising, pushing parts of the supply chains toward other Asian countries, especially Vietnam. China’s widening trade gap will continue to trigger protectionism and tariffs. And the rest of the world will get back to work.

But for now, China is the only rich economy expected to grow in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund. China’s manufacturing index has been robust, indicating that factories are humming. By comparison, U.S. exports have fallen almost 15% in the first 10 months of 2020. Japan’s are down 11.7%.

Meanwhile, China has blown through all the records, notching its sixth straight month of growth. Thanks to exports, China now appears almost certain to reach its goal of becoming the world’s biggest economy by 2030 ahead of schedule.

The change in consumer habits isn’t just visible in sales of high-tech products. People are buying less stuff they need to move around—and simply more they need to stay at home. Shipments of bags and containers fell 8.3% to $2.1 billion, and shoes, boots and footwear declined 8.8% to $3.2 billion, while China exported $6.9 billion of furniture, up 42.7% from the same month in 2019.

In high-tech goods, China isn’t just exporting finished products. Sales to other countries of integrated circuits grew 26.4% to $11.5 billion.

Economists have looked to Chinese consumers to pick up some of the slackening demand, but imports are not keeping pace with exports. Imports increased 4.5% year-on-year in November, furthering widening China’s massive trade surplus with the rest of the world, to $75.4 billion, around double the number the year before, and up from $58.4 billion in October 2020.

The U.S. isn’t the only country ramping up imports of Chinese goods. Exports to the European Union increased 25.5% to $37.5 billion, shipments to India totaled $7.1 billion, up 20.2% from the same period in 2019, and exports to Latin America totaled $16.2 billion, up 29.3% from November 2019.

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John W. Miller is TDM’s Chief Economic Analyst, in charge of writing TDM Insights, a newsletter analyzing key issues through trade statistics.

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