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“Make in India” is not threatened by the new reciprocal rates of the United States, said the former Secretary of Commerce Aup Wadhawan on Thursday, rejecting fears that America could regain his advantage of manufacturing. “It’s not as if India’s creation will be replaced by the brand in the United States. This will not happen,” he said in an exclusive interview with Business Today Siddharth Zarabi.
According to Wadhawan, the American economy is simply not structured to support large-scale manufacturing. “Any kind of manufacturer in your correct mind will not find the north -American environment today.
Wadhawan’s comments took place when Trump imposed a “reciprocal reciprocal rate” of 27 percent on Indian goods, citing the alleged high duties of India on North -Americans. The old bureaucrat said that the new fare regime had little basis in real commercial mathematics.
“To say that India has collected 52% of rates actually,” he said. “Our average rates applied to North -American goods were in a rank of about 12 percent. And the North -American rates were about 3 percent. So there was a differential of 9 percent … but it has adopted a totally strange and unexpected interpretation and not based on reality.”
However, Wadhawan saw silver coatings. He said that many of the Indian competitors such as Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia were affected by even higher rates. Key sectors such as pharmaceuticals, energy, copper and semiconductors are also exempt. “Many of our electronic products like Apple Thon, where 80 percent of the value is American IP, they will also escape the worst,” he said.
Wadhawan predicted that the rates would damage North -Americans. “There is not a lot of response to domestic supply in the United States,” he said. “In Trump’s first term, when he imposed duties, the response from the North -American national offer was very weak and North citizens -Americans ended up paying more. The trade deficit really worsened with China. This is what will happen again.”
Wadhawan suggested that Trump’s actual goal is to use rates as a leverage. “This is the only method of madness,” he said. “But it is a very inefficient method. He will drag everyone to the negotiation table and then try to extract something from them.”
Reflecting on the broadest impact, Wadhawan said that the world has been formally moving away from the Global Commercial Standards defined in the WTO. “Even before this event, the world economic order as conceived under the WTO had been abandoned. This is, in a sense, the final stamp in this abandonment,” he said.
He added that the global economy could now be divided into two zones: a high mariferous area in the United States and a low rate block formed by the rest of the world. “This is a great piece of the world economy: 75 percent of the world economy. Economic activity will go to this low rest of the world’s rates,” he said.
As for India, Wadhawan reduced the fears of long -term interruption. “Our exports to the United States are only about two percent of our GDP,” he said. “If we had been the only confrontation of functions, we would have worried. But others are worse. The price and rate will be largely absorbed by the United States. We will feel a little pain, but it will not be too heavy.”
Wadhawan also made it clear that the Aatmanirbhar’s goals in India remain intact. “The United States is not a major manufacturing power and they are not in a position to become one,” he said. “So manufacturing will not happen in the United States as President Trump conceives it. India has nothing to worry about in terms of these steps, hurting our goal of promoting the manufacturing sector in India.”
