How Modi Is Ditching Indian Protectionism in Favor of Free Trade
The prime minister is racking up bilateral deals as he leaves the old ways behind.
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India this week signed the latest in what’s been a run of rapid-fire free trade agreements. The deal, with New Zealand, is far from the South Asian country’s largest, but like others over the past year it marked a swift conclusion to what had been a drawn-out process.
Negotiations between Asia’s No. 3 economy and the Australasian nation began in 2010, but spent much of the past decade in cold storage. The agreement comes on the heels of India’s “mother of all deals” with the European Union, which ended two decades of stop-start talks. Last July, New Delhi sealed a free-trade deal with the UK, and negotiations continue on finalizing an interim pact with the US.