World trade shake-up: India's confidence seems misplaced

We can't rely on the hope that tariffs will hit other countries worse

- Mihir Sharma

India's policymakers should be drawing up strategies to deal with the new age of trade barriers. Instead, they seem to be looking forward to it with a certain confidence, even optimism. There is none of the concern or outrage visible in other countries that US President Donald Trump has targeted.

Indeed, if anybody nourished a vague hope that Trump would fail to impose tariffs on Indian exports, the man himself dashed them last week. Duties would be imposed on goods coming into the US from 2 April, the US President said in an interview to Breitbart News, adding for good measure that India was "one of the highest tariffing nations in the world."

Perhaps the Indian government takes comfort from the promise Trump made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Washington that a new trade deal between the two countries would be signed by autumn. It is, of course, possible that the White House wants to use new US levies from April as a spur for India's famously refractory negotiators. Trump said himself that he believes that New Delhi will be lowering tariffs "substantially" as a consequence of his actions.