Washington, Oct 3 Raymond Vickery, a former US Assistant Secretary of Commerce for trade development, has lauded India’s measured approach to the recent tensions with the United States.
In an exclusive interview with IANS in Washington, Vickery, who is a Senior Associate, Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), termed India’s stance as “good and disciplined.”
“To the credit of those policymakers from [Prime Minister] Modi, (External Affairs Minister) Jaishankar right on down, the discipline in the message has been very laudable. Instead of just throwing up their hands and saying, you guys are off the charts, and we are not going to have anything to do with you, it's been a good and disciplined approach,” he added.
On Tuesday, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer also termed India’s position in trade negotiations as “pragmatic” and said the two sides are “trying to negotiate a deal.”
During a fireside chat at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, Greer spoke about the continuing negotiations with India.
“The Indians are being pragmatic. We have actually been having conversations with the Indians from day one of the administration on the trade side of the ledger. So, when you talk about a 50 per cent tariff on India, half of that 25 per cent is really the trade-related. It's the reciprocal tariff. It's where we're trying to negotiate a deal," he added.
Vickery, who is also a Senior Advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, argued that the last nine months of the Trump administration have thrown the bilateral ties “backward.”
“This has been in the last eight, nine months, really a disaster for the upward slope of international relations between the US and India, and has thrown us backward,” he noted.
The former senior commerce department official highlighted India-US engagement in multiple fields such as technology, military, health and energy, but warned that Trump’s “transactional approach” could harm cooperation in other fields.
“If this transactional approach continues, then it's going to harm the engagement between the US and India across the board,” he said.
Vickery also commented on the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to China in August to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, as evidence of New Delhi seeking “other partners.”
“India has obviously looked for other partners, and one of those is Russia, even looking to China and to BRICS. These tariffs, in the sledgehammer approach, the transactional approach really do drive India toward China, toward Russia and toward finding any alternatives to the US relationship.”
On the Trump administration’s ambivalence about its China strategy, Vickery argued that the lack of clarity could be advantageous to India but only in the near term.
“It plays to India's advantage, in the sense that both India and China are in the same boat. In the longer run, India has a great problem in regard to China.”
He believed that a possible US-China “grand bargain” in future could damage India’s strategic interests.
“It's entirely conceivable that in order to make a grand bargain between the United States and China, the US will throw in some Indian security interests under the bus, and I'm thinking particularly of freedom of the seas in regard to regard to shipping,” he added.
However, Vickery hoped that New Delhi would take the opportunity to fill the “power vacuum” created by the “America First” approach of the Trump administration.
“I would hope that India would see the power vacuum and the diplomatic vacuum which has been created by this administration, and step up in accordance with Indian values of democracy, in terms of cooperation on economic development, and I would hope that India might move toward a broader view of its role,” he concluded.
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