Newsmaker: US Ambassador-Designate Eric Garcetti and the agenda for India

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (50) had to face searching questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when it debated his nomination as ambassador to India.

Indo-US relations have a lot going for them. For the nth time, the two countries have underlined the importance of their strategic partnership. Post-pandemic economic recovery process will force interdependence. But the challenges to the partnership are many. And they stem from geopolitics as well as from divergence on specific domestic issues.

On the plus side there’s talk of an India-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The two countries have reached “political agreement” on India phasing out the Equalisation Levy (2 per cent tax on the Indian earnings of big tech companies) in line with other OECD countries and the US