The world according to Grok: Keep trade apart

Irony may seem writ large in a legal move made by Elon Musk's X in India amid a dust-up over his AI chatbot. But we must keep matters of free speech out of trade talks with the US

- MANU JOSEPH

India has been playing nice with America's Donald Trump administration. So too with EV-maker Tesla and the satellite services arm of SpaceX, both led by Elon Musk, who is widely seen as President Trump's confidant, a billionaire shaking up the US by taking a chainsaw to its government under the Department of Government Efficiency.

This contrasts with the response of several other countries that the US has threatened with punitive tariffs. Therefore, many see as dark irony the aggressive stance adopted by another firm owned by Elon Musk, X, the microblog platform that he took over in 2022, in suing the government of India over what it sees as attempts to censor free speech.