Any agreement is bound to have rules. And, rules are for others.

"The era of most favoured nation (MFN)-based, dispute settlement regulated international trade governed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) may be drawing to a close," wrote Mohan Kumar. "The biggest change required will be in our attitude towards Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It is also undeniable that, on balance, India has not been able to take full advantage of FTAs signed by it with a variety of partners such as the Association of South East Nations (Asean), Singapore, South Korea and Japan." But, "India will need to enter into FTAs with more trading partners if it is to achieve its goal of a $5 trillion economy". As with the European Union (EU). But, "The history of Indo-EU trade negotiations is a chequered one, and, after extensive back and forth between 2007 to 2013 talks had to be suspended out of sheer frustration by both sides." While India's exports of telephones rose from $0.6 billion in 2014 to $3 billion in 2020, it is nothing compared to Vietnam. "From just $0.9 billion in 2009, its telephone exports rose to $21.5 billion in 2014 and to $31.2 billion in 2020," wrote Prof Arvind Panagariya and Deepak Mishra. How? "Whereas Indian leaders routinely express regret at having signed FTAs even with countries accounting for minuscule proportion of the country's trade, tiny Vietnam has boldly embraced such economic giants as China and the European Union in FTAs. It aslo has FTAs with every single Asian country of any significance." "In 2019-20, Indian exports and imports to the EU $53.8 billion and $51.2 billion respectively, making India a net exporter," wrote Siraj Hussain and Jayant Dasgupta. India levies high duties on dairy products which is why it walked out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations. The EU will want reduction in duties on dairy products, cars and alcohol. However, apart from their share of 41% of central taxes granted by the Finance Commission, Business Standard, states in India raise most of their revenue from taxes on alcohol, on petrol and diesel, on vehicles, on property registration and sales, and on aviation turbine fuel (ATF), insightsonindia. In 2011, we learnt that "Imported liquor is likely to get cheaper, with government willing to lower import duty on alcohol from the EU", Economic Times (ET) but, in fact, prices have more than doubled since then because taxes have been jacked up so high, even on Indian brands. As cars are seen as luxury goods, "India's federal goods and services tax (GST) rate on automobiles, including cars, motorbikes and trucks, is as high as 28%, on top of which other taxes are imposed by states," Reuters. The automobile industry contributes 7% to our GDP, constitutes 49% of manufacturing and employs 35 million people, wrote N Chandra Mohan. Taxes need to be lowered to boost sales. Finally, "At the insistence of the EU, we have also agreed to the 'launch of negotiations on a standalone investment protection agreement'," wrote Mohan Kumar. That may open India to litigation as our government is used to changing rules suddenly. After Walmart bought Flipkart for $16 billion in 2018 and paid withholding tax of $2.5 billion, Financial Express, the government changed rules of e-commerce, apparently to help local businesses, NDTV. "Devas Multimedia's investors investors are eyeing several properties owned by the Indian government across the world as they seek to enforce a $1.3 billion arbitral award the satellite company won against Antrix, the commercial arm of India's space agency," ET. Foreigners refuse to be treated like Indians. That's the trouble with FTAs.