What message for Pompeo?

US trade representative Robert Lighthizer told  the Ways and Means Committee of the US Congress that India has the "highest tariffs of any country you can imagine". "They have a very status kind of economy. It's very heavily regulated. They have created problems in the digital space, in the agriculture space, in regular manufacturing. I mean in retail, just across the board," he said. But, in a big sigh of relief a spokeswoman from the State Department said, "The Trump administration has no plans to place caps on H-1B work visas for nations that force foreign companies to store data locally." India is the biggest beneficiary of the H-1B visa program, being awarded three-fourths of the total in 2018. Our IT industry is heavily dependent on these visas to provide onsite engineers at cheaper costs. Since IT contributes 8% to our GDP, a restriction of H-1B visas to India will hurt our economy. Earlier, India imposed tariffs on goods imported from the US in retaliation for the US withdrawing facilities for duty-free imports from India under the Generalized System of Preference. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to visit India next week. The US does not want India to buy 5G equipment from Huawei and warned any Indian company supplying US equipment to Huawei will face a tough response. "India's decision to buy the long-range S-400 missile defense system from Russia will have serious implications on defense ties," the Trump administration has warned. India has asked all foreign companies to store data on Indian customers within India, apparently to ensure privacy for us. Which is rich, because in 2017, the Attorney General told the Supreme Court that Indians have no fundamental right to privacy, so citizens maybe forced to provide fingerprints and iris scans for government surveillance. He further argued that Indians have no right over their bodies, thus giving politicians and civil servants life and death control over citizens. The government is asking WhatsApp to fingerprint messages so that they can be traced to their source. Which would allow the police to arrest anyone criticising the Supreme Leader. "Over three years after it struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court on Monday said that it was shocked to hear that authorities still continue to book people under the now extinct and draconian provision." Our government continues to use British sedition laws to intimidate citizens into silence. The US says that data localization "would damage digital economy and harm privacy", wrote Prof RK Joseph. With China and Pakistan threatening us we need the US. So what will we say to Pompeo?