. . >> so we have on beside and actually growing much larger a vision of east asian which is

summoned by the east asian summit and plus 3. both india and the united states are, in a sense, outsiders. we are a part of apec, the indian government is a part of the east asian summit, but in the next couple of years it seems to me there's going to have to be decisions both within asia and also by the united states and india as to how we want to participate and in which institutions. some of you may know last year and he's still pushing it pretty hard kevin rudd, the then new premier of australia has been pushing an asia-pacific community which would combine economic security and political. that is not, he has not gotten very far with that, but i don't think he's going to give up, and it has caused others to say we may not agree with kevin rudd, but we need to go forward. so i think both india and the united states are going to have

to, as i say, make some decisions. the administration, for instance, there is on the table now the so-walled p-4 agreement -- so-called p-4 agreement which is a little dart that schwab sent their way by starting negotiations with the p-4 which is singapore, brunei, chile and new zealand which has already been taken as part of a sign of the obama administration interest in getting forward in some sort of regional approach. my only feeling from the united states' position and not speaking in any sense or knowing how the indian government would react to this would be that the united states should really move, i think, aggressively at least behind the scenes to reinvigorate apec, and as others have pointed out we've got to by chance, we've got a series of three meetings, the first meeting in apec is chaired this year by singapore and then japan

and then the united states in 2011. and i hope when the administration gets its act together and can face down house democrats that it will take advantage of that. the singaporeans are trying to get the obama administration interested. the japanese are interested in following through on theirs, and from a political point of view some advance before he goes into an election campaign would be something, it seems to me, something that should be attractive to the obama administration. one final set of points and that is -- and here these are more questions than anything else. which arvin and the others will know more than others. when you look over india's ability to move forward, and i realize arvin may have reservations about moving toward with -- forward with ftas in general, but thus far i went to the government site, and they

list about 14 sort of what could be fount r counted as ftas, but several of them are really superficial. there's some goods preferences between a couple of countries. the indian-asean fta which apparently they're going to sign i think goes to another level, but the key, though fairly complex and deeper fta though certainly not of the caliber that the united states has signed, the europeans have signed and others is the indian/e.u. fta which is moving forward, but it's had great difficulty. what i'm not clear about is the ability even know with all we've talked about with the elections, the new mandate, the congress party in control, the ability of that government to sign what would be called really deep engagement as it were ftas going forward.

that will impact not just the ftas they're talking about, but the ability of india to participate in whatever course merges for intra-- transpacific or intraeast asian community building. thank you very much. >> thank you, claude, and i wanted to thank you all very much for your presentations. before we move to questions from the awpped yens, i actually want to take the moderator's prerogative and follow up on an issue that you've all touched on with respect to india and its fta policy. india has been in negotiations with the european union as well as with korea, and given the slow process of the doha negotiations we've heard that, that u.s./india trade has increased greatly in the last ten years. and my question is with the sort of still-forming trade policy

positions of the obama administration combined with the potential new impetus in india for, perhaps, more work in doha as well as in fta policy what could we see happening in terms of perhaps a u.s./india fta? and with respect to the other regional arrangements, can the u.s. compete with the e.u. and korea without an fta in end cra? -- india? >> i think that it is interesting to look at the evolution of india's ftas as claude was outlining, and the rubber is really hitting the road in the negotiations, india's negotiations with the e.u. because interestingly in india they can launch negotiations very quickly quite in contrast to what happens in the united states where we have

to deal with fast track and congressional approval. i often looked with envy at how fast they can get things started. the question is what are they getting started, and what are they ending up with? with most of the negotiations to date they're very, very limited in scope and even with tariffs that wouldn't pass muster in the wto and certainly wouldn't be of the scale, anywhere of the scale we would be interested in. but what i hope is that we will build confidence and build building blocks for a much more ambitious relationship with india, and that is why we have really advocated starting with an investment agreement where progress can be made because people don't think about it, but an investment agreement is really one fundamental building block of a broader fta, and if that actually could occur, and that certainly wouldn't happen

overnight because nothing negotiated with india or the united states happens overnight, but if that really could happen, then we could look to the next steps. i don't know what to say about your question about europe because i think the jury's out as to whether or not how broad the agreement that india will negotiate with europe is. i think when they initially started, the negotiators in india were very upbeat about broad subjects. i was shocked to hear them talking about investment and competition in an fta. but that was a couple of years ago. now they're stuck on a number of the tariff issues, a number of the service issues, and i wasn't, didn't realize but the latest on the general labor issues, but because of that issue i think that it's important for us to start and build the confidence in the relationship where we're not confronting so starkly some of the differences in perspectives before, between our two countries.

>> in an fta between the u.s. and india, it's quite unlikely for quite some time to come actually on both sides. i mean, on the u.s. side i don't think the u.s. will move without labor standards being an integral part of it. india would have none of that. not so far. i mean, one could possibly think of a limited one in services, but there we have no history actually on the u.s. side of doing an agreement only on services. but services is one area where you could potentially do a lot of possibilities, also, of growth in trade. one could sort of more or less standards issue on fta and services alone, but that's the maximum. the u.s. has not had a history of doing those, so i'm not quite sure how that will play out. on the indian side my take is the first serious one for india

will take forever, as we have already seen. i mean, even asean which is probably the first serious one, i mean, among the existing ones the only one i see which is, you know, a little more than simple exchange of references is india/sri lanka, but even that is ridden with a large number of exceptions, a very long, negative list and so forth. so the first test is asean, i think that would open the door on ores, but that remains to be seen. >> well, if i can open the floor for questions. yes. >> my name is dan, i'm with the council on foreign relations. i'm wondering in terms of india's trade relationships within the region, so we were talking about india, asean's, india's look-east policy, asean

plus 3, what are the nature, what is the nature of those trade relationships? india has spoken about prosiding services and other countries being better at manufacturing and things like that. when india negotiates trade agreements with these other countries, are the trade agreements really, you know, sort of assisting with those comparative advantages? what is, what does the trade actually look like between india and these other countries? is -- and who's benefiting in what ways? >> india's largest trading partner in asia actually is china, but asean is getting big also. i sort of follow trade policies a lot more closely than i follow the actual goods and services being exported. the trade relationships in asia have grown very rapidly, so certainly there is huge scope

for it to continue to grow, but other than that i'm not sure, you know, what are the actual goods. i mean, i know that india has been importing manufacturers from china big time, and india has been exporting to china largely minerals, that type of products. but to asean i'm not quite sure what the composition is. >> again, without knowing all the details my impression because of the way policy has unfolded is that growth is the recent, the growth in trade between india and the rest, southeast and east asia is within the last decade or even half decade because it's only at that point that you begin to see the country after late '90s or even after 2000 that people part of this was from the government of india itself, but part of this is from other governments, you know, start saying, you know, we can't think about regional institutions without

thinking about india. and before that you really wouldn't have done that because it really wasn't that important. and suddenly you can just see it when you're reading academic literature or you're reading the newspapers that india appears on the scene which it hadn't been before because i think most southeast asian and east asian minds india was thought of as a part of south asia. and so it was never thought that they would be part of a regional construction, and now that's no longer the case. >> i just want to say one thing looking to the future. i think everybody thinks about india as a great service power, but if you look at what india's goals are vis-a-vis the developed countries, it is actually to achieve real openings in manufactured goods. i think they feel newfound competence in their ability to compete with developed country companies, and that is where they're going to be looking, for example, with europe and someday

if they're ever going to negotiate with the united states. i think with singapore where the increase in trade has been in the services area. >> chow chen, freelance correspondent. my question would be to arvind, but other members in the panel could respond. climate change is a global issue, and change is due to the years making by the developing country the personal lifestyle and industrial manufacturing. so what do you think, what do

you think that direct country with growth change in terms of developing country? thank you. >> yeah, this is a long and complicated question. i mean, that lot of the damage to the environment that we see today was due to the, due to the emissions done by the developed countries. that's your question, right? yeah. yeah, meaning the people that have written on climate change and india, i go through this. this is as to who should pay for it, and there is a parallel in the u.s. law, of course, that, you know, when the superfund was created precisely to collect

actually taxes from the companies that had been, that had been actually the responsible parties to the love canal and other sites. and if you go by that kind of past, you know, u.s. tradition you would argue that the developed countries really ought to pay for the climate change that is happening today. now, in the other side of it argues, the other side, the other side or the opposite argument is when the developed countries, when they started emitting carbon and, you know, the industrial revolution started and so forth, nobody knew this was going to create this kind of global warming down the road, and so they never knew about it. you can argue on the other side as well, actually, that looking a lot of the times we don't know there are examples of slavery, for instance, where those really

didn't know they were going to actually damage the futuregen rations, and so nevertheless we do actually then go in and have an an affirmative action, and someone cold argue the other -- could argue the other side that the mere fact that was not to argue in favor of some sort of compensation by those who actually caused the problem. so, anyway, there is a vibrant debate on that that is a complicated issue. in the end it's going to be ultimately the solution will have to be negotiated, political solution. even setting that aside you've got the issue of the flows, future flows, who should contribute how much to the future emissions and even there actually it's a north/south problem. again, ultimately the way your question is phrased, it seems to me in the end you're trying to get at the north/south aspect of

it. and that remains on the future flows. given the fact that even by today's standards at least in per capita terms, the emissions are much higher in the developed countries than in the poor countries. so we'll have to wait and see how it goes. >> i wonder if i could add something on that because, excuse me, i don't to leave people with the impression that just because the indian government's position is that the indian emissions are so low that their responsibility is not as great as the western countries that somehow that means that india's just kind of blowing off the whole issue. it's not true. i mean, the indian government, indian businesses, indians as individuals understand the dangers from climate change, understand that they will be affected as badly, maybe even more badly than people in the west will be.

the, my company, for instance, has, takes very seriously what we consider to be our responsibilities as emitters of carbons into the atmosphere. we have our automobile company, our power company, our chemical companies, we understand that these are very large, very large polluters, and our chairman has told everyone in the company, first of all, to initiate a top to bottom review of our, our carbon footprint to determine how we can sort of improve it. and second of all, to develop new technologies that will allow us to grow and to grow our businesses and sort of produce more of what it is that we produce be it automobiles, power, chemicals, whatever it might be in a more environmentally sort of sensitive and friendly way which is one of the reasons, as i mentioned earlier, that we even have someone in my office whose one of his main responsibilities is to identify these kinds of

technologies that are being developed here in the united states that we can then take back and adapt to india to allow us to grow in a way that sort of is less damaging to the environment. so please don't think that somehow india's just blowing off the whole issue just because the official position is that india should not be sort of saddled with a lot of restrictions that are similar to those being given to the western and larger, much larger polluters, and they're taking very seriously the role, and they're going to be participating. but they'll be participating in a way that is, i think, sort of different from those that are already sort of, sort of contributing to global warming in a much larger and more, more dangerous way than india at present. >> it'll be interesting to see the indians pick up the ingenious argument of the chinese which is that you pay, you shouldn't just pay attention to the producers or exporters such as the chinese, but

actually it's the consumers in the west that are really benefiting by the quality and the price, so the consumers in the west also ought to have a responsibility for paying for some of this. if india becomes an export power, could happen. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> [inaudible] retired from the u.s. department of commerce and trade policy. one question i had was basically how does india's relationships with the bricks going to play out both in terms of competition and. [inaudible] >> i mean, currency finance is currently not a big issue, and on trade really if you ask me we all love to talk breaks, but in the end it's going to be -- you know, if you look at the progress, russia happens to be a bit large, so it's in there, and brazil and outside of the e.u.

and north america. in a way, why do we look at breaks? because these are the four large countries sitting outside of europe and of north america. but, you know, brazil again is not growing very rapidly, russia is big because energy. in the end, you know, i moon, potentially -- i mean, potentially the countries that are going to be important are india and china. and their trade relationship certainly is growing very rapidly. you know, india's trade with china was almost negligible. today merchandise trade if you look at it if i'm not mistaken, china has become india's largest trading partner, so trade side india and china their relationship has grown enormously rapidly, i think more rapidly than any other trade relationship of india with another country. so that's roughly where -- >> if i might just add to that, though, i think india's

relationship with china, trade relationship with china is an interesting and complex one because at the same time that it is rapidly growing, it's filed more trade actions, many trade actions against china because going back to what i said earlier, well, india seeks to compete with developed nations in the manufactured good area, it sees china as a big threat, and india like so many countries who are negotiating in the round and really the backdrop to the wto/doha round is the fear that so many countries have of lowering their tariffs on a most favored nation basis because of the fear of competition from china. >> well, with that i think we'll conclude our economic panel. if you'll join me in a round of applause for our panelists.

[applause] we have next a keynote by ambassador blake so, please, stay seated. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> i'm going to give everybody a one-minute warning to just sit down and make yourselves comfortable, grab whatever soda you want, if you don't mind. thank you. ..

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