Within a fortnight after announcing a trade deal with the EU, the Indian government announced its entry into a “framework agreement” on trade with the US—a precursor to an “interim agreement” and a subsequent full-fledged bilateral trade agreement. Both “trade…
Leaders of both parties to the recently finalised Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and India have hailed the deal as historic, with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even hyping it as the “mother of all…
Early in January, preliminary estimates of China’s trade surplus (from the General Administration of Customs of China) placed it at $1.7 trillion in 2025, as compared with $993 million in 2024. The sharp 20 per cent rise in the trade…
When US President Donald Trump announced in early August that imports from India to the US would be taxed at the rate of 25 per cent (with few exceptions), many were taken by surprise. Given the bonhomie on display between…
There is nothing definitive about policy under US President Donald Trump. With the deadline for accepting his trade demands having passed, a revised set of tariffs has been announced, lower than the originally threatened hikes of up to 49 per…
Early into his second term, US President Donald Trump has lived up to his image of being a Great Disruptor with his across-the-board (country-wise and commodity-wise) increase in tariffs on imports into the US. In the process, he has launched…
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government seems set to initiate another era of trade liberalisation. In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of ministerial-level delegations visiting the country and travelling abroad, announcing the revival after years in some cases…
Karl Marx had once said that all criticism must begin with the criticism of religion. Paraphrasing Marx one can say in the current economic context that all criticism must begin with the criticism of the GDP. This conceptually and statistically…
The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded. There could of course be too many safety-pins and too few…
Figures on India’s balance of payments in financial year 2023-24, recently released by the Reserve Bank of India, have added to the hype on India’s growth story. India’s current account deficit, or the surplus of current foreign exchange expenditures and…
