Pakistan should profit from the, example US President Donald Trump is setting of India, and instead of any sort of triumphalism, should be glad that it is not in the same boat. After all, India was favoured until recently as the USA’s regional counterweight to China. Now, it is being punished first because it runs a trade surplus with the USA, and because it is buying oil from Russia. Some in Pakistan may feel that India is being driven off by the USA because its recent confrontation with Pakistan showed that it was unable to play the role of a regional counterweight. This should revive memories in Pakistan of how the USA used it, not one but twice, over Afghanistan, and then discarded once its use was over. It would thus be useful not to place too much reliance on US friendship, particularly when it is offered by a loose cannon like President Donald Trump.
Pakistan should remember that it tried its best to get discounted Russian oil. It even imported one shipment, and it was only because it was not really compatible with refining equipment that import was not started. It is not difficult to understand India’s motive in importing discounted oil. It was in the national interest. The accusation, that India was selling it on at full prices, again indicates patriotism or at least good old-fashioned capitalist profiteering, rather than some malign intent, such as providing Russia the foreign exchange it needed to prosecute its war with Ukraine. Pakistan may find two points at which it may bump into US wishes: Iran, and China. Pakistan needs to consider how it will respond of a US attempt to punish it by penal tariffs or some other economic means.
It is true that the tariffs may create opportunities for Pakistani businesses, for the $87 billion worth of Indian exports taxed are in the textile, footwear, gems and jewellery sectors, in all of which Pakistan has a presence. However, the most salutary reminder that can emerge from this whole affair is that nothing is permanent in economics. If it had been, the British would still be exporting opium to China, and that too at gunpoint. It is perhaps simplistic to see what is happening as merely the whims of an unstable character. It is more akin to the death-throes of a large animal before the end. What has happened to India is not an bilateral affair, but is a lesson for all US interlocutors to learn from.
