{"id":128280,"date":"2021-08-24T20:25:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T14:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=128280"},"modified":"2021-08-26T18:24:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T12:54:14","slug":"india-pivot-from-look-east-to-trade-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/india-pivot-from-look-east-to-trade-west\/","title":{"rendered":"India pivot from Look east to trade West"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Source:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/epaper.livemint.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId%3D248016223e7%26imageview%3D0&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1629882237083000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG82tdd50BWdkXcBK1M9M-L3k-Sng\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LiveMint<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance<\/strong>: To understand India&#8217;s Free Trade Agreements (FTA)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Synopsis<\/strong>: India has signed numerous FTA&#8217;s, but they have not yielded expected results. As India embarks on a new spree to sign new trade deals, India needs to do its homework very well.<\/p>\n<h5>Introduction<\/h5>\n<p><strong>India recently <a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/opting-out-of-rcep-a-right-move-for-india-17th-november-2020\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">backed from\u00a0Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership (RCEP)<\/a>. Probable causes include:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Widening trade balance with China<\/li>\n<li>Chinese goods might make a two-way entry via some other countries<\/li>\n<li>Border conflict with China<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Why did India face setbacks in the East?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>India&#8217;s Look East was followed by ASEAN (2009), South Korea (2009) and Japan(2011). India&#8217;s Act East policy was to cement this further, with RCEP at the fulcrum. But all this faced<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>India has sought a review of FTA&#8217;s with S Korea and Japan, which have been refused by the respective countries.<\/li>\n<li>Some experts claim that is because India&#8217;s major export items like Pharma etc. are subject to regulatory norms and thus face Non-Trade Barriers.<\/li>\n<li>This has led to the belief that India&#8217;s FTA is not working, or their utilization is low.<\/li>\n<li>According to a Deloitte study, FTA utilization is about 70-80% for developed countries, but 3-4% for developing countries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Why India is turning towards the west for FTAs?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>There is a compulsion as many of India&#8217;s trade partners in Asia are unhappy with India not joining RCEP.<\/li>\n<li>Moreover, India&#8217;s exports have been stuck at $300 billion for over a decade now. So India needs market access.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is visible as India is negotiating trade deals (FTA) with the UK, EU. Similarly, India is also working to close a PTA with Canada and maybe with the UAE.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>EU and UK, post-Brexit have emerged as hopeful candidates for FTA&#8217;s.\n<ul>\n<li>While the UK is keen to expand its trade basket post-Brexit, EU and India are keen to start again after the failure of the Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>What are the stumbling blocks to sign FTA&#8217;s with the west?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<h6><strong>Challenges in Europe:<\/strong><\/h6>\n<ul>\n<li>EU insistence on labour and environmental standards, access to Government procurement and stricter IP norms will not be easy for India to meet.<\/li>\n<li>While India seeks zero duty access to garments, textiles and leather, the EU is keen for market access to automobiles, wines etc.<\/li>\n<li>Also, the EU wants to split talks into 3 compartments &#8211; trade, GI tagged goods and services and investment. While India favours parallel talks and simultaneous agreements.<\/li>\n<li>Data access is another sticky point with the EU not granting India the &#8216;data adequacy&#8217; status. As per experts, this requires India to legislate similar law like EU&#8217;s GDPR (General data protection regulation) guidelines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h6><strong>Challenges in the US:<\/strong><\/h6>\n<ul>\n<li>Though India was hopeful of FTA under the Trump administration, the recent US government has signalled that they are not in a hurry to sign FTA.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Way Forward:<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Despite difficulties, India will find it easier to settle with the West than with the East.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Terms to know<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/free-trade-agreements-fta-challenges-opportunities-explained-pointwise\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Free Trade Agreement (FTA)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/indias-act-east-policy-issues-and-challenges\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Act East policy<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/rcep\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/india-eu-bilateral-trade-and-investment-agreement\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source:\u00a0LiveMint Relevance: To understand India&#8217;s Free Trade Agreements (FTA) Synopsis: India has signed numerous FTA&#8217;s, but they have not yielded expected results. As India embarks on a new spree to sign new trade deals, India needs to do its homework very well. Introduction India recently backed from\u00a0Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership (RCEP). Probable causes include: Widening&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/india-pivot-from-look-east-to-trade-west\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">India pivot from Look east to trade West<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5480,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[9223,216,9324],"class_list":["post-128280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-free-trade-agreements","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-india-pivot","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":1700774990,"cached_date":1704894265},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5480"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}