Trumps Trade War With China Could Be Good for India. But Is It Ready?

Even when India was staring down the barrel of a 27 percent tariff on most of its exports to the United States, business executives and government officials saw an upside.India’s biggest economic rival, China, and its smaller competitors like Vietnam were facing even worse.India has been pushing hard in recent years to become a manufacturing alternative to China, and it looked as if it had suddenly gained an advantage.Then India and its smaller rivals got 90-day reprieves, and President Trump doubled down on China, boosting its tariff to 145 percent.The sky-high tax on Chinese imports to America presented “a significant opportunity for India’s trade and industry,” said Praveen Khandelwal, a member of Parliament from the ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a top figure in the country’s business lobby.India, with its enormous work force, has been trying to elbow into China’s manufacturing business for a long time, yet its factories are not ready.

For the past 10 years Mr.Modi has pursued a goal he named “Make in India.”The government has paid incentives to companies producing goods in strategic sectors, budgeting over $26 billion, and tried to attract foreign investments in the name of reducing India’s dependence on Chinese imports.

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