India’s trade with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea has grown under FTAs, but imports have consistently outpaced exports. A different kind of buyback. Is this the beginning of these kinds of buybacks? Come January 2027, will India’s online platforms get their own Tukaram? Four rules made HDFC Bank a compounder. All four have stopped. Can the new CEO rewrite them? Gold rush on Dalal St as regional jewellers bid to be the next Tanishq Hormuz is a state, not a strait. There are 10 other possible chokepoints for the global economy, including India Will the yuan become the new yen? Indias early FTAs promised a two-way trade highway, but 15 years later the traffic looks decidedly one-sided. Deficits with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea have ballooned as imports raced ahead of exports. Trade experts say the answer is not to shut the road, but to repair it — from tariff imbalances and non-tariff barriers to poor FTA utilisation and costly inputs at home.
