US report accusing other countries of facilitating China’s exports lacks proof: Report

New Delhi, Aug 21 (IANS) India has rightfully maintained a measured stance by promising to review the facts presented and follow the extant laws of the land in reaction to a White House Report that puts India in a list of more than 40 countries that have allegedly helped China in transhipment of exports to the US, according to an article in the Saviour magazine.

The article highlights that transhipment is simply cargo moving through an intermediate point on its way to a final market. It becomes fraud only when a good’s declared country of origin is falsified to escape the tariff its true origin would attract, but the White House report offers no such proof against India nor does it mention any Indian company that could have allegedly carried out such an operation, the article written by KBS Sindhu states.

It also underlines that Caroline Freund’s own research, cited approvingly by the White House, found that Vietnam’s apparent 16.1 per cent “rerouting” share collapsed to 1.8 per cent once matching required the same firm, not merely the same tariff code in the same quarter.

The article also brings out the anti-India bias of Peter Navarro who heads the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy that released the 25-page report on August 13, titled The Great Transhipment Scam: Rise, Scope, and Costs.

“Within forty-eight hours of the release of the report, Navarro was on television saying India was “well on our radar.” This came a week after he had accused unnamed “Brahmins” of “profiteering at the expense of the Indian people” over New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases,” the Saviour article states.

“No Indian company is named. No importer, exporter, freight forwarder, vessel, container number or bill of lading is produced. Instead, the report offers a phrase — “India’s Pune-Gujarat-Chennai production belt” — paired against Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus as “ugly sister cities,” under “HS 8413-8414: pumps and compressors”.

“However, Pune lies inland; Gujarat has several ports and a dozen industrial districts; Chennai is both a manufacturing hub and a port. Converting that geography into an actual shipping route, without a manifest, is an inference the White House’s own document declines to make,” the article states.

It further underscores that what is alleged, at most, is that some shipments passing through Indian territory may have been mis-declared as to origin under US domestic customs law — a matter of individual importer liability under American statute, resolvable through American administrative and judicial process against the specific parties concerned, and nothing that implicates the Indian state or Indian industry as a whole.

The article highlights that a nation of 1.4 billion-plus citizens, a constitutional democracy older than most of the “Tier 1” jurisdictions named alongside it, owes no confession to a report that names no defendant.

New Delhi has offered none. Asked about the report at his August 14 media briefing, the MEA spokesperson answered in two sentences: “We would like to study the findings and the methodology that has been adopted in detail,” he said, adding, “We have robust laws and procedures governing customs, rules of origin and exports, and any instances of violation that may be there are dealt with in accordance with law.”

That answer is sufficient on its own terms. A document that will not name a company, a shipment or a route does not merit a point-by-point government rebuttal. It merits the two sentences it received, followed by the quiet work of audits, reconciliations and cooperation where genuinely warranted, the kind of work a mature administration does regardless of who is speaking from a podium in Washington, the article concludes.

–IANS

sps/na