India Must Draw the Line with Washington |
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The latest from Washington is US President Donald Trump’s threat to declare the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” The comment came as efforts to revive peace talks with Iran remained stalled. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said on Friday.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Just how seriously Trump intends to pursue such a fantastical proposition is difficult to say. But the statement is revealing nevertheless. Iran has rejected the claim and continues to insist that the reopening of the Strait will be under Iranian authority. Meanwhile, shipping through Hormuz has virtually collapsed, with Iran retaining considerable influence over what traffic does pass through the waterway.
For India, however, the larger lesson lies beyond the immediate crisis in West Asia. The increasingly unpredictable manner in which the United States is exercising its economic and strategic power should prompt New Delhi to begin drawing some lines of its own.
For much of the past year, India has found itself being kicked around by Washington on one issue after another. The most immediate is trade. On paper, India and the US are negotiating an interim trade agreement intended to provide a mutually acceptable framework for tariffs. But the problem is that the goalposts keep moving.
In February, Washington and New Delhi announced an interim framework under which the United States would apply an 18% reciprocal tariff on Indian goods, accompanied by substantial Indian concessions on American exports. The subsequent US Supreme Court decision striking down Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs altered the legal basis of that arrangement.
Washington then imposed a temporary 10% tariff, while the two countries continued negotiating a longer-term agreement. With the expiry of the legal authority for this tariff, the US has taken recourse to a 10% tariff on the basis of Section 301 of the US Trade Act alleging that India has........