| Dear Express Explained reader, As I write this newsletter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top Indian officials are meeting with President Xi Jinping and his team ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Heads of State Council meeting in China. By evening, we will have clarity on what was discussed, and in what ways the discussions took forward the process of rebuilding of bilateral ties that has been underway over the past several months. For India this meeting is crucial because of an unexpected changing of the rules and tone of the India-US relationship by President Donald Trump – apparently because New Delhi did not display sufficient enthusiasm about his desire to get the Nobel Peace Prize, and declined to endorse his claims that he stopped India’s military conflict with Pakistan. Should India in these circumstances work harder to build closer trade and economic ties with China, the world’s second largest economy and America’s only competitor? The answer is complicated, and it is obviously too soon for New Delhi to commit itself to any significant change of policy – to be sure, Trump and some of his aides like Peter Navarro seem to belong to a small minority of people in Washington DC who see value in torching a relationship that has been nurtured by both Republicans and Democrats over 25 years or more – but Udit Misra, who has been closely tracking Trump’s tariffs policy and its many implications, considered some obvious questions in this regard and looked for answers in data. His conclusion: closer trade ties with China at this moment is fraught with significant challenges. Do read Udit’s argument and see if you agree. Udit wrote separately about Trump’s extraordinary attempt to sack a member of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve system, and why this step, even aside from its alleged unlawfulness, appears worrisome to markets, investors, and economic policymakers around the world. At stake here is the credibility of the United States dollar as the safe-haven currency of the world. A major sticking point in the negotiations to hammer out a trade deal between the United States and India (before the talks were paused by Trump’s imposition of the discriminatory 50% tariff on Indian exports to the US) was New Delhi’s determination to protect India’s farmers, including the dairy sector. Harish Damodaran wrote an interesting piece that began with the question, ‘How competitive and efficient is India’s dairy sector?’, as things stand today. He compared price competitiveness in milk in India with numbers in Europe, America, and New Zealand, as well as the comparative efficiency in processing and marketing. It’s an unusual analysis, and very instructive – so do check out the conclusions that Harish reached. Finally, I’d like to recommend to you this week Arjun Sengupta’s big-picture telling of the story of the H-1B visa that is so coveted of Indians, and which several figures in the Trump administration have openly said they should be deprived of. (The President himself has been ambiguous.) More than 70% of all H-1B visas go to Indians, and this has caused heartburn not only among the MAGA crowd but also among those on the American left who are the most passionately opposed to the politics of nativism and xenophobia. Their reasons are, of course, different. Thank you for reading The Indian Express Explained. There is a large body of explanatory journalism, on a wide range of topics, on our website, and I hope you will check it out soon if you haven’t already. Also, many of our best explainers are now behind a paywall, so I hope you will subscribe. I assure you it will be money well spent. Sincerely, Monojit | 
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