The Geopolitics of a 'Trade Deal': Old Playbook, New Tariffs
When the AP reports on India’s nationwide strike protesting an interim trade deal with the US, it casts the resistance as a response to market-oriented policies and subsidized agricultural products. This framing, however, overlooks the deeper historical pattern of trade agreements being instrumentalized for geopolitical control. FIRST INSTANCE: The 'Most Favored Nation' Precedent (1950s-1960s):
Following India's independence, initial trade agreements with Western powers were often tied to Cold War allegiances. While not explicitly tariff-based, 'Most Favored Nation' status, a cornerstone of GATT (established 1947), was wielded to influence newly decolonized states, pushing them towards American-aligned economic systems and away from Soviet influence, often at the detriment of nascent
domestic industries. The Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank, 1944) were designed to create a post-war economic order that, while appearing multilateral, often favored Western interests. REPETITIONS: Structural Adjustment and Market Access (1980s-1990s): During India's economic liberalization in the early 1990s, the IMF and World Bank imposed 'structural adjustment programs' (SAPs) as
conditions for loans. These SAPs typically required deregulation, privatization, and opening markets to foreign — predominantly Western — goods. Critics, like Walden Bello (Focus on the Global South, 1999), documented how these policies often led to displacement of local producers, deepened inequality, and facilitated resource extraction, rather than equitable development. India's agricultural