Donald Trump’s top trade advisor Lighthizer has claimed in a new book that ‘India is the most protectionist’ country in the world.

Robert Lighthizer, who served as President Donald Trump’s trade representative between 2017 and 2021, titled his book No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Competing China, and Helping America’s Workers Published last year, it was claimed that he had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting that India was ‘the most protectionist country in the world’ and that its trade practices were hurting US farmers and leading to a huge trade deficit. While contributing to the loss of jobs in America.

News18 has not independently confirmed the details of the conversations Lighthizer claims to have had with Indian officials.

He also writes in his book that during his tenure in the Trump administration, he had biographies of 15 Indian billionaires on his desk while preparing for trade talks with Indian counterparts.

He claims in his book that despite India having an “extremely strong professional bureaucracy” in all spheres of government, “elites” influence government policy.

“When I was negotiating with Indian officials, I kept a copy of the biography of each of the country’s approximately 15 billionaires on my desk. While predicting the position of the Government of India, I will take into account the interests of these people. I remember once telling an Indian friend of mine, who made a lot of money in business, that I think there were 15 oligarchs who basically ran the country. He corrected me. ‘Bob you are wrong. Only seven of them actually run the country. The rest simply try to impress the seven”, Lighthizer noted in his book.

According to a report by Robert Lighthizer Hindustan TimesIt was considered an obstacle to constructive trade talks and a deterioration in India-US relations within the then Trump administration.

There is a possibility that if Trump is re-elected, he will once again contact Robert Lighthizer and according to the report Hindustan Times It also said that he is likely to get a cabinet rank post handling business again.

In his book, Lighthizer recognized India’s strengths and praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking steps to lift India out of poverty. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a particularly interesting person. “He comes from right-wing political organizations and clearly considers himself a nationalist… He is an extremely talented politician and the first leader of India who was born after its independence in 1947,” he writes.

“Modi is dedicated to taking India out of poverty. He believes in doing this through state control of innovation, high tariffs, mercantilism and protectionism. There are a lot of hangovers from the time of British rule, but free trade is not one of them,” he added.

Trade dispute with India, US-China relations

Robert Lighthizer writes that the Trump administration’s strategy with India was to “maintain good relations” but then use its leverage to “expand our access to their market, achieve fairness and reciprocity in trade, and achieve balance”. .

Setting this as the backdrop, Lighthizer shared his side of the story as to why the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) system became a major fault line between India and the US.

Lighthizer acknowledged that the US “tried to take advantage” of India’s use of the GSP “duty-free program” to gain greater access. “India is by far the largest user of this programme. A large percentage of all its imports come to the United States under this preferential duty-free. While India uses GSP and runs large trade surpluses with us, it denies us equal access to its market and charges high tariffs from our producers,” he writes.

America snatched India’s GSP status in June 2019. Lighthizer claims that he tried to reinstate it in exchange for better access to the Indian market. However, the Trump administration realized that this would not happen as India does not generally open its markets, and the demands were being made during the farmers’ protests.

According to the newspaper, Indian officials said they showed flexibility whenever possible to protect Indian economic interests and retaliated when necessary, even using retaliatory tariffs. Officials also found it challenging to deal with an administration that was erratic and had also changed their priorities, but they focused on resisting pressure from Trump, seeing it as a sign of strength and commitment to national interests. I looked.

Discussing India’s industrial policy, Lighthizer mentioned the Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiatives and said India aims to attract more foreign investment, reduce regulations, promote exports and certain sectors like electronics and communication equipment. To protect.

However, Lighthizer also claims that India subsidizes exports through tax breaks and exemptions, particularly in industries such as textiles, steel and wood products.

He also accepted the common challenge from China. During Lighthizer’s tenure under Trump, US trade and China policy faced significant changes, some of which have continued under the Joe Biden administration.

“Perhaps most importantly, China’s rise and increasing militarism is the biggest geopolitical concern for both our countries. Both India and China claim territory over the mountains that separate them. India feels equally threatened by China’s aggressive rise as we do. There is truth in the old saying (amended for obvious reasons) that the opponent of my opponent is my friend,” he added.

Lighthizer also mentioned and praised his colleagues Suresh Prabhu and Piyush Goyal in his book.

Trump’s chief trade advisor believed that stronger economic ties with India would be great. He saw India as an important ally against China because of its educated population and large workforce. “We clearly have a geopolitical reason for doing this. India is the natural opponent of China. It also has a population that has a large number of very educated and smart people as well as a large cheap labor force,” he said, concluding the part about India positively.