For all the hype around “Howdy
Modi” and “Namaste Trump,” the U.S.-India economic relationship has been
backsliding the last four years. To move forward, Joe Biden must steer the
conversation away from tariffs, an obsession of his predecessor.
The big opportunity for the likes of Apple Inc.,
Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google is in India’s still nascent
but rapidly growing digital economy: smartphone penetration of 32%, compared
with 61% in China. Silicon Valley deserv ..
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Holding, selling or dealing in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could soon land you in jail for 10 years. The "Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019" draft has proposed 10-year prison sentence for persons who "mine, generate, hold, sell, transfer, dispose, issue or deal in crypto currencies. Besides making it completely illegal, the bill makes holding of crypts a non-boilable offence.
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Japan's Nikkei fell on Thursday, with chip-related shares battered after their US counterparts tumbled while the US-China trade dispute and geopolitical risks dampened sentiment. The Nikkei share average dropped 0.5 per cent to 21,032.00. Chip-related stocks lost ground, with Tokyo Electronplummeting 4.2 per cent and Advantest Corp sinking 5 per cent, after the Philadelphia Semiconductor index dropped 2.3 per cent, as Micron Technology Inc and Applied Materials Inc both slumped more than 5 per cent.
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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pushed for India to further open its economy and also "diversify" its energy portfolio, saying countries that have provided American companies access to their markets have seen "real opportunity". Speaking at the India Ideas Summit of US-India Business Council here Wednesday, ahead of his visit to New Delhi later this month, he also said America is "open" to dialogue on trade issues. He added countries that have allowed US firms to have a "fair and reciprocal trade", have seen America open up to them. "And I think they've seen real opportunity." The top American diplomat's remarks have come amid trade-related frictions between the United States and several other countries, including Mexico, India and China. US President Donald Trump has been pursuing his trade policies aggressively and imposed tariffs on China, hitting billions of dollars of import of Chinese products. The US media Friday reported that India could be his next target.
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India is forecast to overtake the UK to become the world's fifth largest economy this year and projected to surpass Japan to feature at the second position in the Asia-Pacific region by 2025, IHS Markit said Monday. In a report on Prime Minister Narendra Modiand his BJP party's victory in the national elections, it said the economic outlook "looks positive" for the second term of Modi government, with GDP growth forecast to average around 7 per cent per year over the 2019-2023 period. "India is forecast to become the world's fifth largest economy in 2019, reaching a total GDP size exceeding USD 3 trillion, and overtaking its former colonial ruler, the United Kingdom. By 2025, Indian GDP is also forecast to surpass Japan, which will make India the second-largest economy in the Asia-Pacific region," it said. As India continues to ascend in the rankings of the world's largest economies, its contribution to global GDP growth momentum will also increase. India will also play an increasingly important role as one of the Asia-Pacific region's major economic growth engines, helping to drive Asian regional trade and investment flows.
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Oil slid towards its worst May performance in seven years, as global trade tensions escalated, undermining the outlook for energy demand growth.
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As Narendra Modi gets into his second innings as Prime Minister, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is likely to visit India in June to discuss the path ahead for India-US relations. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said on Tuesday that "Pompeo will have a very robust discussion on a range of issues" with Indian leaders but did not say when. According to sources in New Delhi, Pompeo was likely to visit India ahead of the June 28-29 G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, when US President Donald Trump and Modi are scheduled to meet. Pompeo would lay the groundwork for their meeting. "India is a great ally and partner of the US," Ortagus told reporters in Washington. The US "will work closely with Modi, as we have many times".
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India could be out of the mega trade deal being negotiated between 16 countries, including the ASEAN and China, if a proposal made by Beijing for a free trade pact excluding New Delhi is taken seriously by other members. “China has started pushing for a free trade pact between ASEAN + 3 (which includes the ten-member ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea) at the East Asia Summit. This would effectively mean that among the 16 countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), all except India, Australia and New Zealand would get included in the proposed pact,” an official told BusinessLine.
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