The proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say, and it remains to be seen if India can use that one weapon in its armoury to extract a trade deal from its tortuous dealings with the Trump administration which glamorised its ties with Pakistan to the detriment of relations with India. It also remains to be seen at what cost the US trade deal will fructify for India as there were suspicions about giving away too much ground. — Representational Image

Now that it has come in the US President’s words, a US trade deal with India is in the offing. Given the protracted nature of the negotiations and a few heavy red lines drawn by India that could not be crossed, the deal has been in the pipeline for far longer than anticipated. But then global geopolitics, as redefined by Mr Donald Trump’s policies have been shifting so much as to have hampered not only the trade deal on the anvil but also sent the US-India ties on a decline.

What has changed between the time that the US President hit India with 50 per cent tariffs, threatened to raise them to 100 per cent for buying Russian oil and then changed his tune to leave them with only a mild tariff for using child labour is a power that gained in importance due to the oil supply crisis through the straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb before strikes on Russian and Saudi Arabian oil refining facilities throttled more than a fifth of the supply chain.

The soft power, or should one say a refined prowess, lay in India’s capacity to process oil in its public sector and private refineries which the US President, who now plays the role of global oil overseer after having first created the crisis by starting the Iran war, has spotted. And he sent his Secretary of State to personally suss out Reliance’s facility in Gujarat’s Jamnagar, home to the biggest single site refining facility that can process 1.24 million barrels a day.

Word on the street is the US, in a bid to use the vast Venezuelan oil resources, even if they are of an inferior grade, would like to rope in India as the refiner and global supplier of Russian oil, now free of sanctions and tariffs for at least for two months, and oil from Venezuela to be carted across the world, which could still be worthwhile as the basic oil costs about 80 percent less than the average prices around $100 a barrel ruling today thanks to the Strait of Hormuz imbroglio.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say, and it remains to be seen if India can use that one weapon in its armoury to extract a trade deal from its tortuous dealings with the Trump administration which glamorised its ties with Pakistan to the detriment of relations with India. It also remains to be seen at what cost the US trade deal will fructify for India as there were suspicions about giving away too much ground.

Going by Mr Trump’s description of the deal going to be “different”, it can be surmised that India-US may sign an initial trade deal covering areas it can agree upon while leaving the sticky points like agriculture and dairy for later. Any trade deal breakthrough will be important as it would be a vindication of India’s strategic autonomy principle applied to foreign affairs and the fact that it stood up to Mr Trump when he was pushing hard on various fronts like H-1B visas and green cards that may affect Indian IT professionals the most.

The trade deal in any form could be the harbinger of a more balanced approach from the White House regarding India and the old Asian binary of India-Pakistan. It appears it may have dawned on a transactional US President that India’s oil refining capacity could be the card that finessed his plans in the prevailing global scenario much as China’s hold on crucial rare earth minerals proved to be.

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