The Hill News

Anyone who has traveled to India recently will have noticed New Delhi’s amazing, new airport. Not only is it shiny and efficient and so unlike the dreary older airport it replaced, there is a Parsons Brinkerhoff-designed, world-class metro connecting you directly to the central business district.  Similarly, the new Hyderabad and Bangalore airports rival those in the U.S. The point: India is on the move.

Likewise on trade, India isn’t waiting for some grand bargain to be worked out at Doha. Instead, India is reaching out to implement bilateral trade agreements to achieve mutual goals. A deal with Japan went into force in August. South Korea and Singapore, too, have executed agreements with India, while negotiations with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand continue. An expansion of an agreement with ASEAN is in the offing. Never to be accused of thinking small, India is pressing ahead to negotiate an FTA with Europe. The point: India’s trade agenda is rea! lly on the move. 

This leaves us in a quandary, as even clearing the pending FTAs with Columbia, Panama, and Korea proves difficult. By not moving forward, American businesses stand to suffer even more than they already have. Magnify this ten-fold or more relative to India, and just imagine the lost opportunity as other economies pair up with the world’s largest free-market democracy, leaving the U.S. behind. 

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