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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said global trade is increasingly "getting weaponised" through tariffs and other measures, and India will have to negotiate its way carefully. She said that the overall strength of the economy will give the country an added advantage. "Trade is getting weaponised through tariff, through many other measures and India will have to negotiate its way carefully in this, and not just take care of tariff but I think overall our economy strength is what is going to give us that additional advantage," Sitharaman said at Times Network's India Economic Conclave 2025. She said that globally it is now "very clear" that trade is not free and fair. "India can be lectured saying you (India) are very inward-looking, you are a tariff king and so on. But tariff has been weaponized," she said adding India's intention was never to weaponise tariffs. India, she said, only safeguarded its domestic industries against flooding which happens from a ...
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said politics increasingly "trumps" economics in the present era. Jaishankar was addressing a gathering after being conferred Honorary Doctorate by IIM-Calcutta at its campus here. "This is an era where politics increasingly trumps economics... and that is not a pun, he said. "The United States, long the underwriter of the contemporary system, has set radically new terms of engagement. It is doing so by dealing with countries on a one-on-one basis," Jaishankar said. He also said that China has long played by its own rules, and is doing so even now. The external affairs minister said in the ensuing scenario, other nations are unclear whether attention should be on visible competition or the trade offs and understandings that punctuate it. "Faced with such pulls and pressures of globalisation, of fragmentation and of supply insecurity, the rest of the world responds by hedging against all contingencies," Jaishankar said. He said I
India on Wednesday called on developing and least developed nations to collectively work to address global trade challenges such as tariff barriers, unilateral environmental restrictions, and hurdles in the services sector. Addressing the 16th session of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said: "It is time for the Global South to speak with one voice on concerns that impact all of us". He said the world is currently volatile, marked by numerous uncertainties, challenges, and ambiguities in the global trading system. "We are living in a world marked by a profound trust deficit, whether in multilateral institutions, different international bodies, amongst nations and multiple critical challenges confront us almost on a daily basis. These challenges are multi-faceted. "It could be the erosion of confidence in the rules based trading system, a lot of non-market practices coming into play, tariff and non-tar