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“So this (investigation under Section 301 of the US Trade Act 1974) is really a mechanism being created, given their (the US) constraints that the Congress is not going to support any of their actions (on reciprocal tariffs)”, the Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal thundered.

“They are trying to create a competitive edge for India. So I don’t think (we need to) worry about Section 301, we will tackle it, it is our responsibility.”

The confidence is unmistakable. The contradiction is even more glaring.

Goyal’s remarks come in the wake of Washington’s announcement on the likely imposition of unilateral tariffs of 12.5% and 10% on scores of countries, citing their failure to impose and effectively enforce prohibitions on imports of goods produced with forced labour.

Yet what is remarkable is not merely the proposed tariffs, but New Delhi’s willingness to rationalise a mechanism that India itself once denounced as a frontal assault on the multilateral trading system.

Unwittingly, Goyal appears oblivious of the stand taken by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government against Section 301 in 2000. India then joined the broader challenge to Washington’s unilateral trade actions in a dispute launched by the European Union, arguing that the United States was reneging on the very multilateral commitments it had helped construct.

India’s critique was neither tentative nor ambiguous. It offered a detailed legal and systemic indictment of Section 301, arguing that countries had every reason to oppose it because of its grotesque violation of multilateral trade rules.

India advanced four reasons (World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel report, pages 265-268).

“Firstly, it is clear that Sections 301-310 are a case of United States reneging on its commitments undertaken in the Uruguay Round” that led to the creation of the WTO in 1995.

“Secondly, regardless of whether or not it is applied in practice, GATT/WTO jurisprudence is that a law, which, by its terms mandates behaviour that is inconsistent with a WTO provision, does violate that provision.”

“Thirdly, Sections 301-310 fall foul of Article 23 of the DSU (dispute settlement understanding); specifically,........

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