Thursday, July 1, 2021

Covid19 - Atmanirbhar Bharat a serendipitous policy response to a protectionist world

This was published in The Times of India on 1st July 2021


In March 2020, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, provocatively said that Covid19 is “the nearest we have to a revelation, even to atheists. We’ve been coasting along for more than half a century…and all of a sudden we are facing the fragility and the vulnerability of the human situation”. More than a year hence, the metaphor rings true. Even the most affluent have been starkly, brutally made to come face to face with human fallibility and mortality. That has been the Black Swan. Several of the outcomes facing the world today, however, are white(r) swans – increasing inequality, higher trade barriers, increasing geopolitical tensions.

Indian economy, already cratering on growth even before the rolling lockdowns started in March 2020, is confronting the same challenges both internally and in its external engagement. Growth had touched a multi-decade low of 4% even without the impact of the virus. Traditional growth drivers had sputtered down, and the country was looking for new imagination and ideas. A big traditional driver of growth that has been morphing itself fundamentally is open-ness of the Western world to free trade.

The growth of Asia post second world war has been a stunning success story of free trade. Or perhaps more accurately, a success of the model where the West (primarily the US) traded one-way market open-ness for political support (against the USSR) – the grand bargain of the 20th century with Asia. Non-reciprocal access to the large consumer markets of the West was a “one-two” punch for Asia – it protected domestic industry from larger, more efficient western firms and incentivized the latter to set up bases in Asia to export back to the West. Japan, the Tiger economies of East Asia and China have all been beneficiaries of this grand bargain. India had been rather late to this party, having decided on a “non aligned” political stance for much of the 20th century on one hand; and focusing on an internally-focused, import-substituting industrial architecture on the second. Post liberalization, India too jumped on the same global trade bandwagon, and the trend-break growth of the last thirty years has a lot to do with India’s global engagement. Most spectacularly in the areas of Information Technology outsourcing.

The free trade consensus, however, has been fraying at the edges for quite some time. Triggered partially by China’s increasingly polemical politics, protectionism has grown in its political seductiveness in the US. Much before the pandemic, President Donald Trump’s MAGA campaign at its policy-core raised trade barriers and tariff levels, mostly against China (and a few small ones against India too). Coming out of the pandemic, the strategy has not met the full measure of its advertised objectives. Prior to Covid19, while exports from China to the US came down a tad, it only seemed to mean a shift in trade chains – from China to other countries in East Asia. Firms, including Chinese firms, relocated from mainland China to Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan. As a result, aggregate US trade deficit has only grown since 2016. The new Biden administration has now finessed the strategy further, via the Securing Supply Chain review exercise, released earlier this month. In a range of key areas – from pharmaceuticals to semiconductors – the US government would now look to build redundancies and sacrifice efficiencies in the process. The redundancies are meant to be built, putatively, around more onshore production and/or those based in “trusted partner” countries.

For good measure, China too, with less fanfare, rolled out its own version of self-sufficiency last year. Confusingly christened Dual Circulation, it identified “internal circulation” - the domestic cycle of production, distribution, and consumption – as the main pillar for its development. “External circulation” – trade and commerce – is expected to play a supportive role only. Details and sketchy and scarce, but it smells, walks and quacks more like a duck (read, greater trade protection) than not.

Last but not least, there is a growing tide of anti-immigration sentiments in the West. It has always been tough for India to trade the area of its comparative advantage – labour, for its area of comparative disadvantage – capital (and market access). Its gotten a whole lot tougher now.

India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat programme provides a somewhat serendipitous potential policy response to the current global group think. Post 1991 reforms, India’s policy framework has generally opted to favour increase in overall cost efficiencies of the economy and attract capital in areas of relative competitive advantage. As a result, whole swathes of manufacturing, where Chinese imports provide cheaper and more efficient alternatives to domestic consumers and industrial users, Indian manufacturing simply does not exist. This is true even for sectors that have no great technology barriers. As a result, India’s biggest trade deficit is not in the area of hydrocarbons (which is usually the most closely monitored variable), but in manufactured goods.







Source: ASKWA Research

As can be seen in the table, manufactured goods represent the biggest deficit hole in India’s trade account. Much of the manufacturing lines don’t need ponderous “reform” measures, nor are they hostage to proprietary technology access. Recently, during the first flush of the pandemic, India realized the strategic weaponization potential of some of these manufacturing lines. Active Pharmaceuticals Ingredients (API), eg, a key pharmaceutical intermediate, had shifted almost wholesale to China (from India even 10-15 years back). A potential choking of API supplies could potentially jeopardize several key and life saving drugs in the country. Similar, even if somewhat less dramatic, strategic potential lies in other areas like electronics, rare earths and semiconductors. The government’s Performance Linked Incentive (PLI) programme – now rolled out across multiple sectors – has sought to specifically target these sources of strategic vulnerabilities.

In short, despite a lot of initial flak, Atmanirbhar Bharat seems to be in lock-step with the global fashion. China’s rise, no longer considered benign by anyone around the world, has had literally bloody repercussions for India. The old compact of the West, around free trade and non-reciprocal trade access is breaking down. Like rest of the world, India too needs to craft a new paradigm.

With trade being intermeshed a lot more with politics, and focus firmly pivoting on trade as a club rather than a global commons (as represented by WTO principles), opportunities and threats have arisen in equal measure. India’s praxis as a leading democracy, member of the Quad and potential bulwark to China opens trade club opportunities. The easy status quo of non-reciprocity with the West, however, is gone. It’s a more complex world, one which is a bit more dog-eat-dog rather than what End of History would have assumed.


No comments:

Post a Comment