India Should Exit Quad, Normalize Ties With China

Country's safety lies in BRICS & UN Charter; de-dollarisation is not only credible, it is happening, says leading public intellectual Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University

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ROF Jeffrey Sachs is one of the world's most respected economists and public intellectuals known for tackling complex global challenges from debt crises and hyperinflation to public health, poverty, and climate change. A former advisor to three UN Secretaries-General, Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is also president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and host of the influential Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs. A bestselling author, Sachs is known for his fearless takes of US foreign and trade policy. In an interview with Jayanth Jacob, Sachs warns that Donald Trump's tariff-driven trade wars are unconstitutional, economically damaging, and geopolitically reckless. Excerpts:

How do you assess Trump's increasing use of tariffs as a political and economic weapon? What it means for the world & India?

Trump's resort to tariffs is illegal under the US Constitution (which gives Congress, not the President, the right to set tariffs, under Article I Section 8). There tariffs may still be struck down by the US courts. The Trump tariff policy will seriously harm the US economy by making it less competitive, thereby stifling US exports. It is already harming the multilateral system by undermining the core principles of the World Trade Organization. The only indirect advantage is that Trump is showing the world that the US government has become a lawless and disreputable political system: corrupt, illogical, and untrustworthy.

With the US increasingly deploying secondary sanctions, is India getting more and more vulnerable?

India's safety lies in the BRICS and the UN Charter, not in the US. India should diversify its export destinations, work with the BRICS on non-dollar payments systems, and leave the QUAD, which is a major disadvantage for India's security. India and China should normalize relations.