When Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of commerce and industry, visited Washington in October, he gleefully shared photos of his talks with his Biden administration counterparts, Gina Raimondo and Katherine Tai, on social media, while hailing the strength of “time-tested” US-India ties at public events.
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When Goyal returned to Washington earlier this month, the contrast could not have been sharper. He left Washington without giving any updates on his meetings with the new US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and trade representative, Jamieson Greer.
A week later, he dropped a picture with Greer on social media, saying only that they had had a “forward looking” conversation, with New Delhi guided by an “India first” approach.
Goyal’s unexpected trip to the US, initially planned for April, was triggered by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of reciprocal tariffs on all trading partners starting April 2.
But more alarming to India – as well as other members of the Brics economic alliance – was Trump’s declaration of a full-scale dispute with Brics over its efforts to reduce its reliance on the US dollar as its trade currency.
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Claiming Brics was “dead”, Trump threatened additional tariffs of 100 per cent on imports from Brics nations for playing “games with the dollar”.
