Jeffrey Sachs Photo: Courtesy of Sachs

"US politicians don't care at all about India. Please understand this. India is not going to reap long-term security by siding with the US in the Quad against China," said US economics professor Jeffery Sachs during an interview with Hindustan Times on Saturday.

Sachs said in the interview with Hindustan Times that he was skeptical from the start about US-India trade talks. "I'm not at all a fan of the Quad … This is the US playing games. It's not in India's interest to side with the US against China." 

"When I was in India in the spring, I said, don't count on some great trade relationship. What India has hoped for, I believe, is that it would be a good partner of the United States because it would be a way for the US to, I'll put it charitably, reduce its dependence on China and increase supply chains with India. I tried to explain, don't count on that," said Sachs in the interview with Hindustan Times.

Sachs' statement comes amid US President Donald Trump's imposing 50 percent tariffs on imports from India, said the report.

According to the Hindu Newspaper, US President Donald Trump on August 6signed an executive order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on imports from India over India "directly or indirectly" importing oil from Russia. This is over and above the 25% tariff on Indian imports that Trump approved on July 31.

Earlier, Mihir Swarup Sharma, a Bloomberg opinion columnist and a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, wrote a report on Friday noting that India was the only country that emerged from negotiations with higher tariffs than those it was threatened with.

Sharma wrote that "the Indian establishment, which largely welcomed Trump's ascent to power and genuinely believed that the two were on the cusp of a mutually beneficial deal, seems somewhat shell-shocked."

In the interview, Sachs' assessment of the recent US tariffs targeting India was blunt: "What's happening with these punitive tariffs is just exposing the basic truth … there is no strategic relationship between the US and India … The US aim is hegemony. It's a delusion. The US is not a hegemon of the world. The US cannot dictate to the rest of the world."

"India should aim for 'a true multi-polar world of mutual respect' - balancing ties with the US, China, Russia, the African Union, and other regions," Sachs stressed in the interview, said the report.

On YouTube, the interview video uploaded by the Hindustan Times received near-universal approval in the comments section. One viewer wrote, "He speaks the truth respectfully," while another noted "India and China's cooperation is very important in today's multipolar world."

Global Times