India Walks Tightrope Between U.S. and China on Trade
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- India's Finance Ministry rejection rate of anti-dumping duty recommendations jumped from 0.5% between 1991 and 2020 to 50–62% in each of fiscal years 2020–21 through 2022–23, per Centre for Digital Economy Policy data shared with The Hindu.
- Cases involving China accounted for 72% of all anti-dumping recommendation rejections since 2000, with the government telling The Hindu this reflects China's higher share of investigations rather than targeting.
- India's import mix from China has shifted decisively toward intermediate goods: electronic components grew from 3.3% of imports in Q1 2015–16 to nearly 13% by Q1 2026–27, Commerce Minister Jitin Prasada told the Lok Sabha in February 2026.
- The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, the RSS's economic wing, called the rejection trend "unfortunate," with co-convener Ashwani Mahajan arguing anti-dumping duty "is a remedy, not protection" and demanding the Finance Ministry justify its decisions.
- India's Union Cabinet in March 2026 allowed FDI from companies with up to 10% Chinese ownership through the automatic route, diluting a 2020 land-border restriction, and in July permitted four Chinese-linked firms to bid on government power sector tenders.
- India ended a decade-long ban on FDI in e-commerce inventory models on July 23, but limited the change to inventory held for export purposes — a partial win for Amazon, which had lobbied for the change, and against domestic trader body CAIT.
- India notified a ban on forced-labor imports after a March 2026 U.S. investigation, which helped bring the final U.S. tariff on India down to 10% from the proposed 12.5%, though experts told The Hindu the ban would be hard to enforce against countries like China and Malaysia.
Why it matters: India's Commerce Minister has acknowledged on the floor of Parliament that most Chinese imports are now capital and intermediate goods essential to India's export manufacturing — meaning the country cannot easily decouple from Chinese supply chains. Yet the RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagaran Manch is publicly calling the Finance Ministry's rejection of anti-dumping remedies "unfortunate" and demanding justification, exposing a domestic political fault line beneath the diplomatic balancing act with Beijing and Washington.
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