Jan. 23, 2018, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at Davos, Switzerland in which he said, “Many societies and countries are becoming more and more focused on themselves… It feels like the opposite of globalization is happening. The negative impact of this kind of mind-set and wrong priorities cannot be considered less dangerous than climate change or terrorism… Everyone is talking about an interconnected world, but we will have to accept the fact that globalization is slowly losing its luster… [In its place] the forces of protectionism are raising their heads against globalization. Their intention is not just to avoid globalization, but to reverse its natural flow… The solution to this worrisome situation against globalization is not isolation. The solution is in understanding and accepting change”:
“India’s Prime Minister Nanendra Modi is the ultimate hypocrite. His nation, with the sixth largest economy in the world, gets the benefit of the same trade rules as Bangladesh, and has benefitted from $4.7 billion of General System of Preferences plus another $28 billion of foreign direct investment from the U.S. in 2016 alone. While India benefits from its own protectionist policies, with high tariffs, intellectual property theft and forced price controls for those who invest in India, Modi wants to lecture the world as if India was some pinnacle of free trade.
“President Donald Trump has held out a hand of friendship to the Indian government during his first year in office and given Modi’s new-found interest in rolling back protectionism, Trump should open the door to a bilateral U.S.-India trade deal by removing India from the GSP and closing the door on India’s grotesque trade barriers forever. We are glad that Prime Minister Modi has seen the light and wishes to join the developed world in free, fair and reciprocal trade — now he needs to show that his Make in India isn’t just a public relations fraud.”
Attachments:
“Foreign Direct Investment and Regulatory Uncertainty: Failures of the ‘Make in India’ Campaign,” By Alex Holcomb, Assistant Professor of Finance, College of Business Administration, University of Texas at El Paso, Jan. 23, 2018 at https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Make_in_India_Report.pdf
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