Barack Obama claimed the White House, saying his election as the first African-American president of the United States sent a message that “change has come” to a troubled nation.
Obama won at least 349 electoral votes, far more than the 270 needed for a majority and the most for a winner since former President Bill Clinton got 379 electoral votes in 1996.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,'' Obama, 47, told more than 125,000 cheering supporters in Chicago.
A wave of discontent with Republican rule and the nation's direction powered the Illinois senator to a sweeping electoral victory over Republican rival John McCain.
Despite the general euphoria, Obama’s election as 44th president of the United States has raised some concerns about the impact of his economic policies on the Indian economy.
Much of the concern has centred on the impact of the Obama presidency on India’s IT industry (see report below). But Obama’s economic agenda of tagging labour and environmental standards with trade is also an area of concern, though it’s unlikely to impact the volume of transaction with the world’s largest economy in the near-term, said experts and policy makers.
The US is India’s largest trading partner and accounted for 17 and 8.36 per cent of India's exports and imports, respectively, in 2007-08. Exports grew 14 per cent to reach $20.71 billion last fiscal, and imports grew at nearly 80 per cent at $21 billion.
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The US president-elect wants to use trade agreements to spread “good labour and environmental standards”. In addition, the election manifesto talked of pressuring the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to enforce trade agreements to open up markets for US products.
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“Both labour and environmental standards will have adverse implications for India,” said Amit Shovon Roy, chair professor of trade, technology and competitiveness at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). “India needs to prepare well the strategy it wants to adopt,” he added, saying he expects labour and environmental issues to be back on the agenda in the next one or two years.
The ongoing Doha round of trade negotiations within the WTO was allowed to go forward after the labour and environmental standards — called the “Singapore issues” after they were adopted at a ministerial meeting there in 1997 — were dropped from the agenda. Analysts expect these issues to be back by US when the current round concludes.
Experts to whom Business Standard spoke said there is nothing new in Obama’s economic agenda, as these have been part of US trade policy for a long time.
"The immediate impact of Obama's agenda on foreign trade could be on sectoral negotiations in the Doha Round of world trade talks,” said Biswajit Dhar, head of Centre for WTO studies in the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT).
He said the US could push harder for talks on sectoral negotiations, in which the focus is on slashing import duties to zero or close to zero especially in sectors like chemicals and electrical and non-electrical machinery.
Meanwhile, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram expressed confidence that US- India relations would strengthen. “A comment here, a comment there about outsourcing, should not bother us,” he told reporters on Wednesday morning.
“Once Obama is in office, he will realise that in this inter-connected world, countries have to work together. The US as the largest economy and India as the world’s largest-free market democracy have to work together. I think we will gain from the new administration," he added.
There is near-consensus among experts that the US is expected to move fast on environmental standards with Al Gore, former US vice president and a staunch supporter of environmental norms, backing Obama.
India’s is expected to feel the heat only if US signs the Kyoto protocol, which has set time-bound targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But there would be strong opposition from US industries for such a move, as there was during Clinton's time despite strong presidential support for the protocol.
Obama’s manifesto promises an economy-wide-cap-and-trade programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 per cent by 2050. It also wants to make the US a leader on climate change.
On other issues like promoting US companies that create jobs in US, Shrawan Nigam, senior consultant with ICRIER and part of India’s negotiating team to WTO for industrial tariffs, said WTO allows issues like non-tariff barriers to be discussed on a bilateral basis.
“It is difficult to discuss issues like non-tariff barriers in multilateral negotiations,” he said.