History doesn’t end today, our old compass has run its course. Here’s a new one for Indi
Tomorrow, as we begin the new year, we seek a new elusive compass. We have relied on a compass that had run its course. We were forewarned that “the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born”. Instead, after a long period of complacency, we now face fractured trade and supply chains, politicised finance, geopolitical tensions, and rudderless multilateral institutions. No rulebook commands universal trust. This year’s defining story could be the requiem of the post-Cold War order. Not through a single collapse but through a thousand cuts. The leadership change in Washington supercharged great-power rivalries. As the ghost of mercantilism displaced multilateralism, India held on to its faith in a multilateral rules-based order and national interest as the compass of independent foreign policy. Tariffs surged from a universal 10 per cent rate to country-specific duties of up to 50 per cent. We responded by pursuing FTAs with vigour, harnessing trade as an engine of growth. Allowing an orderly recalibration of exchange rates could mitigate loss of competitiveness. Notwithstanding recent export …
