Last week, Bertie found himself in Delhi meeting bureaucrats, journalists and politicians of all stripes. In the formal sessions, political correctness reigned, but Bertie has been doing policy trips long enough to know that the real juice starts flowing only during the cocktail hour.
Unsurprisingly, President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs and how soon India could do a trade deal were the centrepiece of discussions. Bertie was told in hushed tones that the American trade negotiators were staying in the same hotel as the policy tour participants, as if physical proximity to them would also mean a faster flow of information. This, thought Bertie, was taking the concept of co-location too far, but it did make him peer at every Westerner at the hotel a few seconds longer than he normally would in the hope of guessing who the constituents of the negotiating party were.
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In the evening, a small informal group gathered around a former senior bureaucrat, where again the topic of tariffs came up. The general tone was one of ruefulness, with some members of the group lamenting the spectre of lower export growth from India and a possible increase in unemployment. The old bureaucrat took all this in but, in his famous measured tone, countered that it was not all gloom and doom. “There is a silver lining. Pretty big one at that.”
The chatter at the table died down, and an air of anticipation hung. The former mandarin did not disappoint. “Trade barriers in India have been going up for the past few years. There is a reason why the US President calls us tariff king.” Everyone agreed that tariffs had indeed been going up. The bureaucrat tilted his head slightly towards a few Americans hanging at the bar and said, “If the deal means that tariff barriers come down, if not completely, at least in line with the rest of the world, that would be an important reform.” There were thoughtful nods around the table.
The official went on to highlight the second silver lining. “Everyone is talking to us, and we are talking to everyone for a trade deal.” He explained that these deals had been meandering through a thicket of red tape on both sides for years, but if US actions injected a sense of urgency in these negotiations, it would be a welcome change. “We could have an agreement with EU (the European Union) within a year. Who would have thought?” he said happily.
“And finally, we might save some foreign exchange,” he said with a twinkle in the eye. “If the US President stops Ivy League colleges from taking in foreign students, we might save some dollars.” Bertie, who has no kids, guffawed at this but wasn’t joined by the group of his middle-aged peers whose kids’ American dreams were now under a cloud. Every silver lining, Bertie thought, has a cloud.