DC Edit | Good Time For Trade Deal With US: India Set To Gain

Being nice to Mr Donald Trump in his second stint as US President must be one of the most difficult tasks that world leaders may have faced in the last year and a half. That they managed it well enough in France at the G-7, which represents the world’s advanced industrial countries, points to necessity having trumped all other considerations, including the stress of economic hardship he contributed to through the fallout of the Iran war.

India does not qualify for a seat at the high table and yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi was very prominent there, flanking Mr Trump along with the host, President Emmanuel Macron of France at the G-7 outreach session. That Prime Minister Modi could chide Mr Trump twice over safety of seafarers is indicative of how much things have changed since the US President has had to compromise to extricate his nation from a foolish war he fought against a nation an ocean and a continent away.

A major mitigating factor that brought about this sea change in dealing with Mr Trump when face to face may have been the fact that the United States, aggressor in Iran along with Israel, had been forced to sign a peace accord that is seen to be hugely advantageous to Iran with a $300 billion reconstruction fund thrown in, besides the possibility of collecting toll for passage through the Strait of Hormuz after the 60-day negotiating period.

There is no doubt that Mr Trump and his USA have emerged severely diminished from the misadventure in West Asia, but then similar forays to the east had invariably failed to meet US objectives after it waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak of the historical blunder of Vietnam. Not one to accept easily that Iran may have pulled a fast one on him by manufacturing economic chaos that the rest of the world and the US could not stomach, Mr Trump has been talking up his capacity to make peace.

Having lost sailors in US war action connected to its blockade of Iranian ports, India was forced to spell out that the world’s sea lanes must be kept safe to facilitate global free trade. That was a plank on which Mr Modi could work his old magic with the US President, whose praise of him was particularly rosy, even angelic in analogy. So much so, it appears the old remorse about tariffs and penalties for buying Russian crude on the cheap and keeping the trade deal hanging might get a chance to be buried for good.

In all the time that Mr Trump seemed to have gone off India and was leaning on Pakistan to find him a route to peace, India may have even given up the thought of trying to negotiate with the US. And it was in the stressful time of tariff tantrums that diversification of trade and ties with a host of other nations gave India a different perspective on its global relationships and lent heft to an ideal independent stance.

With Mr Trump appearing to switch to a different tune now on India and Prime Minister Modi, there might even be cause for optimism that India can iron out the differences and have the best of both worlds. In that sense at least, the G-7 meet and the bilateral with Mr Trump can be said to have swung the pendulum back in India’s favour. It is time then to strike up a trade deal without yielding too much ground.