The Hill News

President Obama continued his Asian tour today, extolling the benefits of a close relationship between the United States and India.

Speaking at a town hall meeting at St. Xavier College in Mumbai, the president said: “The U.S.-India relationship will be indispensible in shaping the 21st century.”

He continued: “As two great powers and as the world’s two largest democracies, the United States and India share common interests and common values.”

The president argued a growing trade relationship could lead to a “win-win situation” for both the U.S. and Asia as a whole.

“We want access to your markets. We think we've got good products to sell; you think that you’ve got good products to sell us.”

He acknowledged the impact of globalization and the changing economic realities facing both India and the U.S.

“For most of my lifetime, the United States was such a dominant economic power, we were such a large market, our industry, our technology, our manufacturing was so significant that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms.

“And now, because of the incredible rise of India and China and Brazil and other countries, the United States remains the largest economic and the largest market but there’s real competition out there.”

Obama also emphasized his support for trade liberalization: “… it’s not unfair for the United States to say, look, if our economy is open to everybody, countries that trade with us have to change their practices to open up their markets to us. There has to be reciprocity in our trading relationship.”

Drawing comparisons between the founding principles of the two democracies, Obama repeatedly made reference to Mahatma Gandhi: “Just as America had the words and deeds of our Founding Fathers to help chart a course towards freedom and justice and opportunity, India has this incredible history to draw on, millennia of civilization, the examples of leaders like Gandhi and Nehru.”