Acting on a complaint by US lawmakers, the US International Trade Commission (USITC) has launched an elaborate investigation to examine a wide range of Indian policies that purportedly discriminate against American trade and investment.
It’s continuation of a battle that began in June when as many as 170 members of the House of Representatives and 40 Senators, following representations from Corporate America, sent out letters to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on the eve of the US-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi.
As part of its examination, the USITC says it will “enumerate restrictive trade and investment policies that India maintains or has recently adopted, determine which sectors of the US economy are most affected by these policies, and describe the competitiveness of Indian firms in these sectors”.
The investigation, Trade, Investment, and Industrial Policies in India: Effects on the U.S. Economy, was requested jointly by the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means.
The USITC, which describes itself as an “independent, nonpartisan, fact-finding federal agency”, says it will report on India’s recent policies and measures that are said to affect US exports and investment and “evaluate the effects of such barriers on US firms and the US economy”.
The trade agency says it will provide several case studies of US firms or industries that have been particularly affected by India’s restrictions. It will also perform a quantitative analysis of the effects of such measures.
Conceived of as an elaborate, long-winded project, the USITC would be coming up with its report by the end of November next year, after holding a public hearing next February.
The agency says it will survey a sample of US firms to “measure perceptions of India’s policies and the impact of those policies on firms’ strategies toward India”.
The USITC says its reports convey the Commissions’ objective findings and independent analyses, without making any recommendations on policy matters.
In the run-up to the New Delhi meeting in June, a host of top American business associations had written to President Obama, complaining that India’s “discriminatory” policies were badly hurting a wide range of US exports and jeopardizing American jobs.
Sixteen top American corporations that had come together on a single platform had sought the Obama administration’s intervention, using all trade tools and diplomatic engagement.