As US Secretary of State John Kerry prepares to visit New Delhi for the annual US-India Strategic Dialogue, leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have demanded that he press New Delhi to reverse some recent Government actions which, they assert, threaten US jobs in the pharmaceutical and IT sectors.
“We have serious concerns about policies adopted by the Government of India that shut out US-made innovative products and transfer US intellectual property to its domestic industry. These policies are directly harming US businesses and threaten the millions of US jobs supported by trade in innovative products,” Senators Max Baucus and Orrin Hatch said in a strongly-worded letter to Kerry.
Democrat Baucus, who heads the committee, and Republican Hatch, who is its Ranking Member, specifically identified “serious problems with India’s treatment and enforcement of intellectual property rights, as well as policies that effectively block US-made information and communications technology”.
Accusing India of “lapsing once again into protectionism”, they put it to Secretary Kerry: “We cannot afford to sit back and watch as India adopts policies that adversely impact US innovative and creative industries, and threaten the greater stability of the international trading system.”
Corporate America has been flexing its muscle lately with 16 top business groups dashing off a letter to President Barack Obama earlier this month, bitterly complaining about India’s “discriminatory” policies that were reportedly hurting US exports and jeopardizing American jobs.
And now two of the top American corporate bodies – US Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers — have announced plans to launch next week a new coalition, called “Alliance for Fair Trade with India”, with the aim of seeking a level-playing field for US businesses operating in India.
In their unusually well-publicised offensive, the industry bodies have taken the stand that unless the Government of India makes a course-correction, its “discriminatory policies” will put at risk the growing US-India trade relationship worth more than $60 billion as of last year.
In their letter, Baucus and Hatch alleged that India was resorting to “compulsory licences” and other actions to allow its domestic drug manufacturers to make generic versions of patented US drugs.